I’m starting to really want an icon for The Prince’s Boy. My budget is of course next to nothing, but it occurs to me there might be some appropriate H/D art out there that could be adapted for the purpose, if the artist was amenable, of course? What’s appropriate payment for an icon illustration… $10?
Ideas? Thoughts?
Do I need one icon for Jorin, and one for Kenet? Since they alternate chapters? Hmm…
The Prince's Boy: 32
(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)
Part 32: Jorin
When next I woke, I found Kan lying next to me, propped up on one elbow, as if he had been watching me sleep.
Much like Kenet used to. And will again! I told myself, but at that moment he felt very far away. And who knew if Seroi had somehow changed him by now?
These thoughts must have shown on my face. Kan stroked my hair in sympathy. “You’re not alone anymore,” he said. “You’re a Night Rider now.”
“Kenet is alone,” I said. “His only ally is his childhood guard, but even he cannot keep him safe from the Lord High Mage. I fear for him.” Judging by the light coming through the tent’s canvas, the sun would soon be rising. “Seroi was training him for his coming of age ceremony. I fear he has dark designs on the prince.”
Kan’s eyebrows knitted. “Tell me what you know.”
Continue reading →
Magic U on sale!!
Ravenous Romance started a sale category and they shift titles in and out of it. This week, the first book in my MAGIC UNIVERSITY series, The Siren and the Sword, is on sale for only $1.99! (Regular price $6.99)
if you’ve been meaning to start the series now that book two (The Tower and the Tears) is out, now’s a good time to pick it up.
https://www.ravenousromance.com/fantastica/magic-university-book-one-the-siren-and-the-sword.php
People Are Strange When You're A Stranger
Another shiver ran through my shoulders, and I wondered if I should put my jacket back on. I wondered if I should just sit here and see what attention I might snare, or if I should be out hunting more aggressively.
I had stumbled my way through the bar ritual before in Providence. The last time had been one night I had talked my way into the No Name. I ended up at a dorm room at Brown University, where my pickup convinced his roommate to go to his girlfriend’s room while I hid my face in the bathroom. We used condoms he’d gotten out of a candy dish in the bar. An hour later I was on my way home, all the while worrying his roommate recognized me from the two gigs we’d done on the campus. As I was leaving I saw two people I knew from the Copa in the hallway and never went back there again.
The man in the leather vest stood up, putting down his beer glass with a loud thump. His eyes passed over me like searchlights. He had the same mustache as the bartender. A pair of mirrored sunglasses rested at the center of his shirt collar, dragging it down to show a tuft of chest hair. He circled around behind me and I shivered again, feeling like a diver in a shark cage. He looked rough, gruff, and tough, like a drill sargent or a prison guard. If he touched me or spoke to me I wondered what I would say, or if I would just flee like the prey his attention made me feel like I was. Perhaps I would merely be transfixed by him, unable to refuse. The very thought made me want to get up and leave, but I didn’t.
Continue reading →
Final 30 minutes of voting?
Woo hoo! Just checked the voting page for the Rose & Bay Awards and it says voting is now closed!
Thank you everyone who voted! The official votes are being tallied, including those left as anonymous comments which didn’t show up in the poll graph results. I will post as soon as I have the results!
Final stretch on the Rose & Bay Awards!
Down to the last three days of voting for the Rose & Bay Awards!
The excitement is killing me. I’m in 1st place by a few votes! If you haven’t voted for your favorite crowdfunded fiction, the Livejournal poll is here: https://community.livejournal.com/crowdfunding/164346.html
If you don’t have an LJ account you can comment anonymously with your vote. My project is “Daron’s Guitar Chronicles” but please vote for *something* even if not that one? (Though your vote would be appreciated.)
The Prince's Boy: 31
(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)
Part 31: Kenet
The next day dawned damp and chill, but the fog burned off by midmorning. From the rise where Roichal’s tent was pitched I could see a large portion of the camp. How many men were here? Thousands, certainly. Finding Jorin was going to be quite a task.
Again I felt no urge to eat. After he had breakfasted himself, though, Roichal taught me to shine his boots and how to oil the leather of his armor. There were many buckles to be shined also, and to be kept from rust. He watched over me for a while, and then left me alone with the tent flaps up to let in light to work by. A soldier sat outside, whistling as he repaired something leather with a long needle. He wasn’t obviously a guard, but I wondered if he were there to keep an eye on me.
Roichal and Marksin came in at midday and Roichal gave me some bread and meat, but still I could not bring myself to eat it. They looked at me curiously and gave me plenty of fresh water. Roichal himself checked me for signs of fever, but I seemed well, just not hungry.
“He’ll eat when he’s ready to,” Marksin said. “Just like a stray cat.”
That made the general chuckle and pat my head affectionately, which felt better than it had any right to.
Mirrored from Circlet Press: Welcome to Circlet 2.0.
The Prince's Boy: 31
(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)
Part 31: Kenet
The next day dawned damp and chill, but the fog burned off by midmorning. From the rise where Roichal’s tent was pitched I could see a large portion of the camp. How many men were here? Thousands, certainly. Finding Jorin was going to be quite a task.
Again I felt no urge to eat. After he had breakfasted himself, though, Roichal taught me to shine his boots and how to oil the leather of his armor. There were many buckles to be shined also, and to be kept from rust. He watched over me for a while, and then left me alone with the tent flaps up to let in light to work by. A soldier sat outside, whistling as he repaired something leather with a long needle. He wasn’t obviously a guard, but I wondered if he were there to keep an eye on me.
Roichal and Marksin came in at midday and Roichal gave me some bread and meat, but still I could not bring myself to eat it. They looked at me curiously and gave me plenty of fresh water. Roichal himself checked me for signs of fever, but I seemed well, just not hungry.
“He’ll eat when he’s ready to,” Marksin said. “Just like a stray cat.”
That made the general chuckle and pat my head affectionately, which felt better than it had any right to.
Continue reading →
Ficlet: Knife play and Arshan
I did my chat today as part of my “virtual book tour,” over at the Livejournal community for Torquere Press.
Folks had requested I post a knife play scene, but I decided that actually using the knife play excerpt in Royal Treatment would have given away too much of the plot, so I wrote a new scene from Arshan’s past instead.
You can read it free over at the chat, in this post: https://community.livejournal.com/torquere_social/1525242.html
The Prince's Boy, Part 30
Yes, it’s that time of the week again…!
Title: The Prince’s Boy, pt. 30
Author: yours truly
Rating: NC-17
Genre: high fantasy, original fic
Summary: Prince Kenet has lived a sheltered life in his father’s castle–while outside invaders from foreign shores, pestilence, and crop failure plague the land–with his constant companion Jorin, his whipping boy. Jorin and Kenet have been discovering the pleasures of the flesh with each other in secret, but will the ambitions of the king and the schemes of his top advisor, the Lord High Mage Seroi, come between the prince and his boy? And what of Sergetten, the prince’s missing tutor?
Warnings: Male/male sex, dubious consent, corporal punishment, situations of sexual jeopardy.
Part 30: Jorin
When I came to, I was still bound, but this time my hands were in front of me and I was not blindfolded. I was lying on a blanket that smelled of horse and I appeared to be in a small tent.
My head felt like metalsmiths with hammers were shaping it from the inside and my mouth was as dry as if they had gagged me with cloth. I winced as someone pulled aside the flap of the tent and the brightness felt like needles in my eyes.
“Ah, poor thing. Here you go.”
Kan. He knelt by my head and I heard the sound of a flask being unscrewed. He tipped my mouth upward and poured a mouthful of something intensely bitter onto my tongue, but I swallowed it. He let go and already the pain had eased slightly. “I told you you’d feel like this. The tingle-tingle bush in full bloom? I’m not sure if you were lucky or unlucky there, my friend.”
“Kan,” I tried to say but it just came out a croak.
“One thing at a time,” he said, putting a finger to my lips to quiet me. He gave me water next, then went back out of the tent. I did not hear his footsteps, but when he came back in, I had the impression he had circled the tent. “All right. Quietly now. I say lucky because if you’d been awake like the other soldiers you probably would have ended with an arrow in your back. And if you hadn’t been hallucinating and talking aloud, I wouldn’t have realized who you were before I slit your throat, either, Jorin Weltskin.”
He knew who I was!
(Read more)