My first and most recent titles

My first Amber Quill title was Karola's Hunt, which was one of the contest winners in 2004, the first year a contest was held to discover some new writers to add to their regulars. By odd coincidence, I got the email to let me know twelve years to the day from the date the firm will close its doors and site.

This was a fairly mild erotic tale but you have to recall that things have changed a bit in the passing years and we've kept pushing the envelope! It is still sexy and a read a bit out of the ordinary! It was called an example of "classy" erotica, spicy and explicit without being at all crass or crude.

Blurb: Karola, daughter of Diana, is totally innocent and wild, having never left the forest where she has grown up. Then one day she encounters an intruder, someone who looks a bit like her but also very different. In Damien she finds her first human friend and much, much more. Before the day is over, she has discovered what it means to be female as she is awakened to the delights of her sexuality and the first stirring of love.

But how can Karola ensure Damien will return again to play more of these magical games with her?

My most recent story is a gay romance, which has been the principle genre in which I have written for the past several years. It is a nostalgic contemporary, not quite far enough into the past to be historical but not in the twenty-first century, either. The tale is set in 1949 and that era posed some challenges in presenting a gay relationship at a time when attitudes were far less tolerant and homosexuality was still illegal in most places. Still, I enjoyed writing it and paid a kind of tribute to the magazine that was a way for me to find some friends long before the internet dating scene was even imagined! So here is Thank You, Ranch Romances

Blurb: Rancher Wade is struggling to hold his life together after his wife’s death leaves him with two small children as well as a ranch to run. In desperation, he puts a letter in a pulp magazine, announcing that he’s seeking a housekeeper and nanny to help him manage his home. The last thing he expects, however, is the young man who steps off the train in response to the ad.

Darnell is at the end of his rope. The war is over and jobs are hard to find, especially to one who has few skills other than cooking and keeping house, learned while he helped his abandoned mother keep their family intact. The letter he finds in a discarded magazine seems a godsend, so he jumps at the opportunity. It doesn’t take long to fall in love with young Ben and Winnie, but he also develops a huge crush on the rugged and manly Wade, who seems to be everything Darnell is not. Dare he dream that Wade might find him attractive, too?

In the 1940s, the vernacular used toward people such as Darnell are crude and insulting. Prejudice abounds, and he feels its keen cuts. Can he make himself a place in the lives of the family he has adopted, or will hate and suspicion send him fleeing?