An exciting day!

Today was a day of excitement and awesomeness. Seriously!

Biggest news: My story will be published. (!!!) Read on for more cool stuff...

In no particular order (in part because I'm too psyched right now to put things into an order):

- Saw the Batman movie this morning. It was pretty spectacular and even had a little romantic element, too. Of course, being the romance reader that I am, I wanted the romance to be more developed, but hey, a girl can only dream, right?

 - My improv class graduation show was today.  On stage.  No script.  Completely improvised.  Yup, pretty much everything that would normally cause me to go into heart palpitations.  Surprisingly, I think it went...fairly well.  I know, it's a shocker.  I originally took these classes in an attempt to overcome my serious control freak tendencies.  Sort of a "getting over a fear of heights by standing at the top of a mountain" kind of thing. The interesting part is...I found that I kind of liked it.

- Okay, I guess this would actually go first if I were putting things in order. There's no lead in, so I'm just gonna say it: MY STORY WAS ACCEPTED TODAY! Yay!!! I just found out (literally, like thirty minutes ago) that Into the Deep will be published in Going for Gold, the Olympics-themed anthology to which I submitted it recently for consideration.  I'm really excited. I had a blast writing about those boys, and I'm happy to have the opportunity to share them with everyone. I don't know any of the details yet, but I'll definitely keep you all posted on when it's coming out (pun totally intended again, heh!).

Okay, that's a wrap on my end.  Gonna ride this high for a while and try to get more of my Man-to-Man Coverage: Extra Point writing done before I have to get crackin' with edits of Into the Deep.  Yes, I gave M2MC2 a new, footbally name. It's 100% from Cam's POV, and he is a big sweetheart. :)

Floating on a cloud of awesomeness,
NJ

The verdict... (or, brought to you by the word "yay!")

Hesitatingly dips a toe into those "author" waters...

So, my story's been around for about a week, and...it appears that it does not universally suck! Yay!

When I wrote it and submitted it, I was, in my mind, covering my eyes with one hand while thrusting my other arm out to turn in the completed story. Maybe I was peeking a little, too.

Basically, I had no idea what to expect. It could have been an unmitigated disaster...or not.

I think I might lean on the side of "not" at this point. Yay!

At the very least, there are people who like it enough to ask what happens next. Yay! So, yeah, I'm now writing that part. People care enough about Brad and Cam to want to know! That's awesome! *insert fist pump* Right on!

(To be fair, there were also some people who didn't care so much about them, but I'm not going into that right now because it's likely to dampen my "yay, it doesn't universally suck!" high. I'll save that for another post...or not.)

ANYWAY, the working-titled Man-to-Man Coverage: Revisited (such a creative title, I know) is now a WIP. I had fun writing a nice little sexytimes scene already, too. *evil grin and evil hand rub* Um, not of the usual m/m hand rub variety, I mean...  I'm about 3400 words into it right now, which is speed racer pace for my typically sloooooooooow writing. Let's just say that, in the normal scheme of things, plants would grow faster than I could eke out 1000 words. M2MC (that's Man-to-Man Coverage - yes, I am strangely fond of acronyms and called it this throughout the writing process) really came down to the wire, and that gave me a month and a half to finish what ended up being a 16K word story. Like whoa.

Separately, I still haven't heard anything about my diver story. I dunno...is that a good thing? To recap, I submitted my Into the Deep story last week for consideration for an Olympics-themed m/m anthology. I've been trying not to be neurotic, but um...I haven't heard anything, and I have no idea what that means. Eeks!

So, yeah, crossing my fingers and toes while also trying to write M2MC2 (yay, acronyms!) is kind of impossible, so I'm just going to let my little diver and bartender ride off into the sunset (but hope I hear back soon either way!) while focusing on my footballers, who actually have people who care about them already.

Yay, footballers! Yay, cock! (Long story, but that was kind of a battle cry while writing these m/m stories...) Yay, reading! Yay, Goodreads M/M Romance group readers who are super awesome and supportive!

Happily typing away about footballers,
NJ

Coming now!

Yup, no longer "coming soon," but rather "coming NOW."  Pun totally 100% intended. :)


"Man-to-Man Coverage" was released today on the Goodreads M/M Romance group and is downloadable as an ebook via the "download ebook" link here.

Hold me - I'm scared!

On a semi-related note, I had the pleasure (pun also probably intended...) of explaining to a group of my friends what "frottage" means while we were picnicking in the middle of Bryant Park and surrounded by hundreds of people. Hand gestures were used as an educational tool. Awesome. :)

Dodging those public lewdness complaints,
NJ

T-Minus One Week!

Soooo...my story is coming out next week. I'm kind of excited, but mostly scared shitless. I hope people like it or, at the very least, don't hate it.

This lowballing of expectations is a weird mental state for someone who has always been a pretty notorious overachiever in everything else.

Oddly, this feeling hasn't discouraged me from writing my little diver story. It's almost done, then off to my friend for some feedback.

On a separate note, Feline Nico has started to smell like Chloe perfume. What has he been getting himself into...??? :)

Basking in her newly-discovered underachieverness,
NJ