QSFer Eric Alan Westfall has a new MM urban fantasy book out:
Mage: Field agent for the Mage Council, charged with enforcing the Prime Directive—Humans Must Not Know—on Earth and several Worlds Beside. His secret vice is MM romances. He’s a firm believer in the Four Effs, with the fourth being a quick application of his Fuhgeddaboudit spell when he’s done.
Wolf: The mage’s other soul. He’s snarky, pushy, opinionated, and addicted to shifter stories, which they read on their Kindle Voyages. Preferably about wolves (well, duh!), but he has a sneaking fondness for dragons, even though they’re either extinct or never existed.
The accountant. Short, slender, muscles for maybe a couple of hours, although he insists he has at least a three-pack. A nice but not a Howard of Troy face. Owns his own business and gives excellent investment advice. He gives excellent other things. Certain body parts come to mind.
There’s also: a cruisy trail in Forest Park, a prophecy from the current COO of Delphi, Ltd., who doesn’t like the mage at all; Lateesha, who may or may not have supplied “enhanced” lemonade; plus a bit of Oz, South Pacific, the Scottish Play, Peggy Lee, Gone With The Wind, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and others.
41,850 words of story. 100% of royalties go to a local LGBT organization.
Excerpt
BEFORE THE BEGINNING IS OVER AND THE BEGINNING BEGINS
Steven
The damn wolf was looking at me.
I wouldn’t mind a wolf looking at me if it was, like, on the other side of some glass wall or across the wide, deep, empty moats of the habitat-things over at the Zoo. No problem.
Or outdoors, even. You know, you’re out for a stroll in your friendly neighborhood forest, walk into a clearing and whoops! there he is on the other side. Staring at you while you stand very, very still, and like Elmer says, you’re vewy vewy quiet. You watch him lick his chops a little, showing a lot of big freaking fang, while he decides if he’s gonna eat your ass or not.
I prefer my ass eaten in a different way, thank you very much.
Then he decides your ass is not worth the effort of chasing you, plops his hind legs down and sits on his ass, tilts his head and goes on staring, daring you to do something. A kind of Travis Bickle, “You lookin’ at me? You lookin’ at me? Who the fuck do you think you’re lookin’ at?” look. Which, when you think about the whole not-worth-it thing—which I never would, of course—is kind of offensive. I have a very nice ass, well worth running after. Or so I’ve been told. And who am I to disagree with thousands of admirers?
Hundreds?
Fine. Twelve and a shrug-accompanied “meh” from number thirteen?
So. Wolf-stare in the forest? No problem. I’d back quietly, safely away, and there wouldn’t be a confrontation. No one would get hurt.
Whoa
What?
Hurt? Confront?
Double whoa! Mild-mannered accountants don’t confront wolves in forests, even imaginary wolves. At least not ones named Steve.
Um…accountants named Steve, not wolves.
But a stare from a tattooed wolf? That wasn’t a different kettle of fish, it was a different fishing-boat-full.
I was minding my own business. Really.
Taking a walk on a gorgeous sunny day in Forest Park, along one of the trails twisting through the wooded area in the southwest corner, rounding a curve, and there he was, all six-four, -five, -six, -seven-or-more of him.
My business right then was admiring the large, muscular ass dressed in low-riding, almost ass-crack-showing, faded denim short shorts, which almost didn’t cover his cheeks. And admiring the hairy, muscular legs running down and down and down to sandaled, no socks feet. I was sure once I got a good look, I’d see they were large, and long-toed, with delicious curls of hair on each and a sprinkle on the arches. It’s not like I have a foot fetish or anything. I also haven’t engaged in any long-term survey to find an answer to the age-old conundrum: Is there a cock to foot size correlation?
And if I let my romance-novel-type gaze wander back up, past a trim waist, to admire a tanned broad, broad back bereft of any covering—a back with a more-than-life-size, detailed tattoo of a pissed-off, but not quite snarling black wolf with golden eyes—well, who I gaze upon is nobody’s business but mine.
I defy anyone to call it cruising if all you do is stop and stare at someone blocking one of those trails, who makes your cock twitch, your ass clench and release, and a little drool leak out of the left side of your mouth. Especially when you have to stop.
It would have been rude to shove the obstacle of giant guy aside and walk on by. I am not a rude man. The polite thing for me to do was to wait until he moved on, and then admire his ass and the rest of him until we reached a point where I could reasonably pass him. Which was where the trail ended. I am a very polite man.
Besides, I couldn’t move so much meat, er, muscle, without his cooperation. He was standing with his legs apart, braced, head tilted forward as if concentrating on something important on the ground, or maybe farther along.
True, I could have tried going around him, but that would have been detrimental to my health. The branches on all those bushes on both sides of the narrow path would’ve scratched me all to hell if I tried pushing through them. Plus there were all those green leaves which could be poison ivy, oak or Yma Sumac.
I could have opted for getting his attention with a polite cough, and asking him to move his delectable ass and let me pass. A choice leading to no more ass admiration, to say nothing of the rest of his rear view. No wishing for that consummation.
Given those facts I had no choice but to wait and admire. I’m very patient when admiring.
I was patienting and admiring just fine, with no problem other than a semi-hard dick, which isn’t a problem when what you’re watching is so fine. But then the wolf blinked.
And looked at me as stud guy straightened.
Author Bio
Eric does not do well with third person writing, as his own writing mostly attests. Nevertheless, he’s giving it a go again here. Eric is a Midwesterner, and older than dirt. Or as Lady Glenhaven might say, “He’s old enough to have sailed with Noah.” In the real world he writes for a living, with some who would claim what he writes is really fiction. He started reading at five with one of the Andrew Lang books (he thinks it was The Blue Fairy Book) and has been a science fiction/fantasy addict ever since. That’s why, with some exceptions, most of his writing has been and probably will be in those genres.
The exceptions are his Another England (alternate history) series: The Rake, The Rogue and the Roué (Regency novel), Mr. Felcher’s Grand Emporium, or, The Adventures of a Pair of Spares in the Fine Art of Gentlemanly Portraiture (Victorian novel), Banging the Bishop Back (Regency short story paired with RRR), and the forthcoming no way out (Regency novel) and The Serpent Mark (Regency novel).
For one brief and shining moment (on March 5, 2017), Eric’s fantasy novella, Tattooed Wolf and Painted Dragon, was No. 10 in Amazon’s gay fantasy Kindle sales. And it has a really nice five-star review.
Other things in progress are some MM fairy tales: Of Princes False and True (from an Andrew Lang fairy tale); 3 Boars & A Wolf Walk Into A Bar (Eric is sure you can figure this one out), and The Truth About Them Damn Goats (of the gruff variety).
Eric also hopes to finally get A Rollerblade Day, a book of mostly gay poetry, released, along with the fairy tales, in the first half of 2017.
Now all he has to do is find the time to write the incomplete stuff! (The real world can be a real pain!)