"How to Walk Like a Man" - Cover reveal & first excerpts!

HowToWalkLikeAMan-600x900 Yay! It's taken some time to get my ducks in a row, but today is the cover reveal for "How to Walk Like a Man", the sequel to "How to Howl at the Moon"!

The cover reveal is taking place on two blogs: The Novel Approach and My Fiction Nook. Each blog features a different excerpt.

1. The Novel Approach (CLICK HERE)-- includes the first section in chapter 1 plus a giveaway of a $10 Amazon gift certificate.

2. My Fiction Nook (CLICK HERE)-- includes the second section in chapter 1 plus a giveaway of a $10 Amazon gift certificate.

The book is available for pre-order here.  Release day is Nov 13!

I loved writing Roman's story and I hope you like it as much as I do.

Eli

 

 

 

The Mating of Michael -- now on audio book!

This has been a good month for me and audio books!  "The Mating of Michael" is also now available on audio book and it's wonderful! The narrator, Michael Stellman, previously recorded my story "A Prairie Dog's Love Song". He does a great job with "The Mating of Michael". You can hear a sample at the link below. Thanks, Dreamspinner, for producing this title! http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/The-Mating-of-Michael-Audiobook/B011S4ARJK/ref=a_search_c4_1_8_srTtl?qid=1437311913&sr=1-8

 

"The Stolen Suitor" -- new novel just completed!

stock-photo-8774434-red-boulder-barn I once heard a saying: the greatest days of a man's life are the day he buys a boat and the day he sells it. lol

Maybe there's a parallel for authors: the best days of an author's working life are the day he/she starts a new novel and the day he/she turns it in. I'm pretty sure that's the case for me, anyway.

Yesterday I submitted a new novel, tenatively titled "The Stolen Suitor", to Dreamspinner.  It's a very plotty book with lots going on. It weighs in at 65K words, which is fairly long for me!

I wrote "A Prairie Dog's Love Song" in the spring of 2013 and it came out Dec of 2013. It's not one of my best-received books, but it's one of my own favorite.  Even though it's contemporary, it has a folksy, down-home, cowboyish tone that was inspired by one of my favorite romance authors, Pamela Morsi ("Simple Jess", "Courting Miss Hattie").

When I wrote "Prairie Dog", I already had a sequel/series in mind, but nothing immediately came of it. Finally, I got to return to Clyde's Corner, Montana.  "The Stolen Suitor" is the result. Joshua and Ben make an appearance in "The Stolen Suitor", but it's about a new couple and can be read as a stand alone.

Here's the (temporary, a quickie written by me) blurb:

The Stolen Suitor – by Eli Easton

Summary/blurb:

Mabe Crassen has an idea—a wicked, brilliant idea. She wants her older son, Eric, to court the pretty widow in town. If Eric marries her, the Crassens will own the biggest ranch in Clyde’s Corner, Montana.  Unfortunately, the widow already has a suitor, Chris Ramsey, the local dandy. Mabe suspects Chris is light in the loafers and sets her younger son, Jeremy, to lure him astray.

Jeremy Crassen wants to go off to college and become a writer. Ever since his father went to prison when he was only seven, the name ‘Crassen’ has been the lowest of the low of Clyde’s Corner. Jeremy grew up hiding behind his long hair and disappearing into his stories.  So when his mother promises to give him her blessing for college if he seduces away the suitor of a local widow, Jeremy agrees. Now shy, virginal, secretly gay Jeremy has to figure out how to attract Chris Ramsey, the rich son of the town’s Mercantile, who may or may not like men.

Chris Ramsey is back in Clyde’s Corner after ten years of living in Denver. The death of his best friend convinced Chris he was needed at home.  Chris is a settling-down, family kind of guy, and his last free-loving boyfriend convinced Chris he’d never have that with a man. It seems like the right thing to do to marry up with Trix, his best friend’s widow, and help raise 4-year-old Janie.  After all, there’s more to life than passion and sex.

It’s when we know exactly where we’re headed in life that lightening can strike out of nowhere. With any lucky we’ll end up, not with what we want, but with what we really need.

What do you think? Are you in?

Eli

First Excerpt: "Kingdom Come"

KingdomComeCoverLarger "Kingdom Come" is a murder mystery set in Amish country with a romance subplot (m/f).  It's being published by Penguin/Berkley in the Berkely "Prime Crime" line.  It will be published under my 'other author name' Jane Jensen since it's more mystery than romance.

Here's the link to the Amazon page.

And here's the first excerpt -- the first scene in the book.

The Dead Girl

“It’s . . . sensitive,” Grady had said on the phone, his voice tight.

Now I understood why. My car crawled down a rural road thick with new snow. It was still dark and way too damn early on a Wednesday morning. The address he’d given me was on Grimlace Lane. Turned out the place was an Amish farm in the middle of a whole lot of other Amish farms in the borough of Paradise, Pennsylvania.

Sensitive like a broken tooth. Murders didn’t happen here, not here. The last dregs of sleep and yet another nightmare in which I’d been holding my husband’s cold, dead hand in the rain evaporated under a surge of adrenaline. Oh yes, I was wide-awake now.

I spotted cars—Grady’s and two black-and-whites—in the driveway of a farm and pulled in. The CSI team and the coroner had not yet arrived. I didn’t live far from the murder site and I was glad for the head start and the quiet.

Even before I parked, my mind started generating theories and scenarios. Dead girl, Grady had said. If it’d been natural causes or an accident, like falling down the stairs, he wouldn’t have called me in. It had to be murder or at least a suspicious death. A father disciplining his daughter a little too hard? Doddering Grandma dipping into the rat poison rather than the flour?

I got out and stood quietly in the frigid air to get a sense of place. The interior of the barn glowed in the dark of winter morning. I took in the classic white shape of a two-story bank barn, the snowy fields behind, and the glow of lanterns coming from the huge, barely open barn door. . . . It looked like one of those quaint paintings you see hanging in the local tourist shops, something with a title like Winter Dawn. I’d only moved back to Pennsylvania eight months ago after spending ten years in Manhattan. I still felt a pang at the quiet beauty of it.

Until I opened the door and stepped inside.

It wasn’t what I expected. It was like some bizarre and horrific game of mixed-up pictures. The warmth of the rough barn wood was lit by a half dozen oil lanterns. Add in the scattered straw, two Jersey cows, and twice as many horses, all watching the proceedings with bland interest from various stalls, and it felt like a cozy step back in time. That vibe did not compute with the dead girl on the floor. She was most definitely not Amish, which was the first surprise. She was young and beautiful, like something out of a ’50s pulp magazine. She had long, honey-blonde hair and a face that still had the blush of life thanks to the heavy makeup she wore. She had on a candy-pink sweater that molded over taut breasts and a short gray wool skirt that was pushed up to her hips. She still wore pink underwear, though it looked roughly twisted. Her nails were the same shade as her sweater. Her bare feet, thighs, and hands were blue-white with death, and her neck too, at the line below her jaw where the makeup stopped.

The whole scene felt unreal, like some pretentious performance art, the kind in those Soho galleries Terry had dragged me to. But then, death always looked unreal.

“Coat? Shoes?” I asked, already taking inventory. Maybe knee-high boots, I thought, reconstructing it in my mind. And thick tights to go with that wool skirt. I’d been a teenage girl living in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. I knew what it meant to care more about looks than the weather. But even at the height of my girlish vanity, I wouldn’t have gone bare-legged in January.

“They’re not here. We looked.” Grady’s voice was tense. I finally spared him a glance. His face was drawn in a way I’d never seen before, like he was digesting a meal of ground glass.

In that instant, I saw the media attention this could get, the politics of it. I remembered that Amish school shooting a few years back. I hadn’t lived here then, but I’d seen the press. Who hadn’t?

“You sure you want me on this?” I asked him quietly.

“You’re the most experienced homicide detective I’ve got,” Grady said. “I need you, Harris. And I need this wrapped up quickly.”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t agreeing that it could be. My gut said this wasn’t going to be a cut-and-dried case, but I agreed it would be nice. “Who found her? Do we know who she is?”

“Jacob Miller, eleven years old. He’s the son of the Amish farmer who lives here. Poor kid. Came out to milk the cows this morning and found her just like that. The family says they’ve got no idea who she is or how she got here.”

“How many people live on the property?”

“Amos Miller, his wife, and their six children. The oldest, a boy, is fifteen. The youngest is three.”

More vehicles pulled up outside. The forensics team, no doubt. I was gratified that Grady had called me in first. It was good to see the scene before it turned into a lab.

“Can you hold them outside for five minutes?” I asked Grady.

He nodded and went out.

I pulled on some latex gloves, then looked at the body, bending down to get as close to it as I could without touching it. The left side of her head, toward the back, was matted with blood and had the look of a compromised skull. The death blow? I tried to imagine what had happened. The killer—he or she——had probably come up behind the victim, struck her with something heavy. The autopsy would tell us more. I didn’t think it had happened here. There were no signs of a disturbance or the blood you’d expect from a head wound. I carefully pulled up her leg a bit and looked at the underside of her thigh. Very minor lividity. She hadn’t been in this position long. And I noticed something else—her clothes were wet. I rubbed a bit of her wool skirt and sweater between my fingers to be sure—and came away with dampness on the latex. She wasn’t soaked now, and her skin was dry, so she’d been here long enough to dry out, but she’d been very wet at some point. I could see now that her hair wasn’t just styled in a casual damp-dry curl, it had been recently wet, probably postmortem along with her clothes.

I straightened, frowning. It was odd. We’d had two inches of snow the previous afternoon, but it was too cold for rain. If the body had been left outside in the snow, would it have gotten this wet? Maybe the ME could tell me.

Since I was sure she hadn’t been killed in the barn, I checked the floor for drag marks. The floor was of wooden planks kept so clean that there was no straw or dirt in which drag marks would show, but there were traces of wet prints. Then again, the boy who’d found the body had been in the barn and so had Grady and the uniforms, and me too. I carefully examined the girl’s bare feet. There was no broken skin, no sign her feet had been dragged through the snow or across rough boards.

The killer was strong, then. He’d carried her in here and laid her down. Which meant he’d arranged her like this—pulled up her skirt, splayed her thighs. He’d wanted it to look sexual. Why?

The doors opened. Grady and the forensics team stood in the doorway.

“Blacklight this whole area,” I requested. “And this floor—see if you can get any prints or traffic patterns off it. Don’t let anyone in until that’s done. I’m going to check outside.” I looked at Grady. “The coroner?”

“Should be here any minute.”

“Good. Make sure she’s tested for any signs of penetration, consensual or otherwise.”

“Right.”

Grady barked orders. The crime-scene technicians pulled on blue coveralls and booties just outside the door. This was only the sixth homicide needing real investigation I’d been on since moving back to Lancaster. I was still impressed that the department had decent tools and protocol, even though I knew that was just big-city arrogance talking.

I left them to it and went out to find my killer’s tracks in the snow.

 

Blog Tour: "The Dog Shifters of Mad Creek" on Sinfully Sexy

Read about the inspiration behind the dog shifters of Mad Creek (in the new release "How to Howl at the Moon"). You can enter to win a free copy of the audiobook version of this novel, which is coming out as soon as Audible approves the uploaded audio file (1-2 weeks). http://sinfullysexybooks.blogspot.nl/2015/02/how-to-howl-at-moon-by-eli-easton.html#more

audiobookcover_HowlattheMoon2

Desktop: How to Howl at the Moon

It's release day for "How to Howl at the Moon", the first book in a new m/m romantic comedy series about dog shifters.  I had a blast writing this book, and I'm so excited that it's now out there available to the public.  Fly little bird, fly!  Or maybe, run, little dog, run! It's my tradition to share some of my photo inspiration on release day. So without further ado, here are some images that I found to use as mind candy while working on this story.

NOTE: These are all images I googled. I don't own the rights to them and they are not used in the actual book.

TIM WESTON

Tim is our shy gardener, a full-blooded human who moves to Mad Creek by chance and has no idea that dog shifters exist (or any other shifters for that matter).  Tim is tall, lanky, and a bit gawky. I looked for a long time to find the right 'mind model' for Tim physically, and I fell in love with the photo below. Love those bangs!  (so does Lance)

Hairstyles-for-teen-boys_13

SHERIFF LANCE BEAUFORT

The other MC is Lance, a border collie shifter who is the sheriff of Mad Creek, and a determined protector of the town. I didn't find the perfect photo of Lance. He had black hair and brilliant blue eyes, he's compact and muscular, and intense with a capital I! But here are some images that come close....

110596 (THE HAIR!)

lanceglasses (THE TUDE!)

CHANCE (aka Lance in dog form)

Lance is a shifter descended from border collies. In dog form, he's all black with just a touch of white on his chest and a dot on one ear, and he has brilliant blue eyes. He's very intelligent looking. This is the dog photo I used for Lance. He actually looks quite a lot like the dog that ended up on the cover, no?

belgian-sheepdog

 

MAD CREEK

For my setting, I wanted a small town, someplace remote and someplace that felt a bit interesting or exotic. My husband suggested the California mountains.  We lived in Oakhurst, California for about five years, a small town in the mountains up the hill from Fresno but before you get to Yosemite.  Mad Creek is technically further up into the mountains than that, but I based Mad Creek on Oakhurst. Here are some photos.

oakhurst oakhurst2 oakhurst-california

RENFIELD (aka "Renny")

Renfield is a puppy that Lance gives to Tim. He's a 100% dog (not a shifter) and he's mostly Bernese Mountain Dog.

e22754d768 ontario-bernese-mountain-dog-breeders-112

LILY (Lance's mother)

Lance's mother is also a border collie shifter with black hair and blue eyes. She's wiry, energetic, and basically a whirlwind of manipulation and buttinski-ness.  Julie Louis-Dreyfus is a great comic model for her.

Julia-Louis-Dreyfus-julia-louis-dreyfus-32347420-2000-3008

 

MISC STORY STUFF

Some reference images for rose hips, a Sheiff's badge and the DEA uniform.

rosehip-seed 5944141

ex-dea-agent-moves-to-marijuana-company.si

That's it for this release! I hope you enjoy the book.

P.S. The audiobook is done and is 'in processing' at Amazon. It should be live in the next week or two!

Eli

"How to Howl At the Moon" -- cover & excerpt!

HowToHowlAtTheMoonFINALLRG  Release date: Feb 28, 2015

I'm super, super excited about this book!  "How to Howl at the Moon" is the first book of a new m/m romantic comedy series featuring dog shifters and a little town in the California mountains called Mad Creek.

I wrote the first draft of this novel during NaNoWriMo in 2014, and I had so much fun writing it. I fell in love with Molly Harper's "Naked Werewolf" series and it inspired me to want to write a humorous shifter series of my own, only in m/m.  My husband likes to say he gives me all my best ideas, and I'm afraid there's some truth in that. When I said "romantic comedy with shifters?" He said "dogs!". He was right.

We have three bulldogs of our own and it was a blast to write dog shifter characters and give them dog mannerisms and personality traits. I hope you'll enjoy reading about Lance, his mother Lily (as Lance says, Jewish mothers have nothing on the relentless herding instinct of a mother descended from border collies on both sides), Gus, Roman, and the other residents of Mad Creek. And of course, Tim, our  clueless hero.

You can read an excerpt here. And the book is available on Amazon right now for pre-order.

The cover is awesome, no?  Cover by AngstyG. (Click for close-up)

Also, I am working on an audio book version of this right now!  I hope to have it out around the same time as the ebook.

Eli

"The Mating of Michael" wins in the Rainbow Awards

Pardon me while I hyperventilate. This is the first year I've had a book in the Rainbow Awards and I'm shocked to find that "The Mating of Michael" won 1st place in the Best Gay Contemporary Romance category and second place in the Best Gay Book category. Wow!  I feel so incredibly lucky that Michael and James' story resonated with the judges. This will hopefully get some people to pick it up who otherwise might not have tried it. Thank you.

Also, the "Stitch" anthology I wrote along with Jamie Fessenden, Kim Fielding, and Sue Brown, won 4th place for Best Gay Anthology and also won an award for the cover. Whoot!

Check out all the Rainbow Award winners here:

http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/4489098.html

TheMatingOfMichael_EliEaston

Guest Post: Jamie Fessenden's "Murder on the Mountain" blog tour!

Day Nine of the Murder on the Mountain blog tour!

nh-state-police-badge

 

Although Murder on the Mountain is what’s generally referred to as a “cozy”—a murder mystery solved by an amateur sleuth, fairly light on police procedure—I did do a lot of research on how murder cases are handled in my home state of New Hampshire.  I’m incredibly grateful to my friend, Austin, who took advantage of an opportunity to visit the summit of Mount Washington in February and talk to the rangers stationed there.

If somebody dies on the summit, I discovered, this falls under the jurisdiction of the State Park Rangers.  The park rangers are fully qualified to investigate crimes committed within their jurisdiction, including homicide, unless they choose to bring in the State Police.  Since I hadn’t planned on doing a series of State Park murder mysteries (though that’s not a bad idea, really), I had the rangers call Concord in my novel.

I first thought I’d have Kyle be a member of a local police force near the base of the mountain—perhaps out of Berlin—but it turns out we don’t do things that way in NH.  All homicide investigations are handled through the Major Crime Unit in Concord (http://www.nh.gov/safety/divisions/nhsp/isb/majorcrime/ ).  So Kyle and his partner, Wesley, have to drive an hour and a half north from Concord to Bretton Wood, where the Cog Railway takes them to the summit.  Autopsies are also handled in Concord, at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (http://doj.nh.gov/medical-examiner/ ), so Stuart Warren’s body is taken down on the Cog and transferred back to Concord.

Since I wanted Jesse to have access to the crime scene and Kyle from the beginning, I fell back on the Ride-Along.  This is where a citizen fills out a form and gets approval to ride along in a police cruiser for a day or more.  Under normal circumstances, that probably doesn’t include getting close to a crime scene, and the form takes several days to get approved.  I fully admit I fudged that in order to keep Jesse from being shut out of the investigation from the beginning.

One thing I stand behind, however, despite several comments from readers about it, is Jesse signing himself into the Mount Washington hotel so he can talk to the murder suspects.  I discussed this with some retired police officers in a forum and, even though it seems as though it would be illegal… it isn’t.  There is no law that prevents a citizen from talking to a murder suspect.  If there were, reporters wouldn’t be able to interview them, and that happens all the time.  The police can only restrict access to person after an arrest has been made.  Kyle could have thrown a fit, of course.  He could have threatened to dump Jesse and never see him again.  But he couldn’t force Jesse out of that hotel.

For the next four weeks, Murder on the Mountain will be touring the blogs of several MM Romance authors, providing . If you leave an email address in the comments or email me at jamesfessenden@hotmail.com, you'll be entered into a drawing for either a free copy of Murder on the Mountain or a $40 gift certificate to Dreamspinner Press!

Check out the other stops on the tour at: http://jamiefessenden.com/2014/08/22/murder-on-the-mountain-blog-tour/

Murder on the Mountain400x600

When Jesse Morales, a recent college grad who aspires to be a mystery writer, volunteers to work on the summit of Mt. Washington for a week, he expects to work hard. What he doesn’t expect is to find a corpse in the fog, lying among the rocks, his head crushed. The dead man turns out to be a young tourist named Stuart Warren, who strayed from his friends while visiting the mountain.

Kyle Dubois, a widowed state police detective, is called to the scene in the middle of the night, along with his partner, Wesley Roberts. Kyle and Jesse are instantly drawn to one another, except Jesse’s fascination with murder mysteries makes it difficult for Kyle to take the young man seriously. But Jesse finds a way to make himself invaluable to the detective by checking into the hotel where the victim's friends and family are staying and infiltrating their circle. Soon, he is learning things that could very well solve the case—or get him killed.

BUY LINK: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5335

 

 

 

"The Mating of Michael" -- interview & giveaway on Sinfully Sexy!

Check out a new feature about "The Mating of Michael" on Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews. It includes a review by Macky, an interview with me about the book, and a giveaway.  (And a cool new graphic, which I stole below) http://sinfullysexybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-mating-of-michael-sex-in-seattle-3.html#more

TMOM24

Thank you for having me on the blog!

Eli

"The Mating of Michael" Blog Tour summary post

MatingofMichael_FBbanner_DSP I was lucky enough to find some great sites to host me for the release of "The Mating of Michael". Here's a summary of those posts:

The Desktop for “The Mating of Michael” (my inspirational images posted on my site)

Help Me To Feel: Sex Surrogacy and “The Mating of Michael” (guest post on Boys In Our Books)

Clipped Wings: Writing a Romantic Hero with Polio (guest post on Joyfully Jay)

Interview with me about “The Mating of Michael” on Smoocher’s Voice

Eli’s Blog Post at RJ Scott’s site about writing m/m romance serials

Still to come: Interview by Macky at Sinfully Sexy on Jul 12!

Eli