New tours coming up. Schedules will be posted here: Tour page

Our Rent Boy Collection

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May 7 to June 7

Where You Hurt the Most by Anne Brooke

Priceless by Cat Grant

Cruse de Caminos by Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane

Necessity’s Door by Fiona Glass

Power Play: Awakening by Cat Grant and Rachel Haimowitz

June 11-15

On Monday, February 20, Storm Grant begins her Few are Chosen virtual book tour. Click the banner for all the scheduled stops.

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Why Riptide Publishing?

Earlier this year, I fell into difficulties with one of my publishers and needed to get involved in a legal process before matters were resolved. One of the many people who were kind enough to offer support and advice was Aleks Voinov, who is now one of the owners of Riptide.

In addition, I’ve read and loved books by both Aleks and Rachel Haimowitz, and so I was thrilled to hear they were setting up a new m/m publisher and was very keen from the outset to submit work to them. I was also interested as they were happy to consider more literary work as well as work in the romance genre, and the literary side of the m/m genre (if it should even be called a genre!) is something I very much enjoy working in.

The first story I submitted was, however, more comic in tone, as well as being erotic. Although Aleks and Rachel considered it, and the rewrites, at several levels, in the end it wasn’t quite for them. Obviously I was disappointed, but I’d learnt a great deal about what Riptide was really looking for during the process, and was also very grateful to be given the chance to raise my game from a couple of keen-eyed editors. So when Aleks said he would be willing to look at something else from me, then I started to write a story that’s been floating round my head for quite a while. At least the beginning of it has – I never really know what’s going to happen until I actually get writing!

Once I’d finally completed The Heart’s Greater Silence, a story about the end of two affairs and one man’s battle with faith and love, I edited it as carefully as I could and then held my breath and pressed the Send button. Honestly, I’ve never been so nervous …

Much to my relief, Aleks and Rachel replied almost at once, in spite of Rachel’s attendance at the recent GayRomLit conference, and expressed interest, as long as changes could be made. One of the many aspects I admire about Riptide is the way, at least in my brief experience, they’ve always been willing to offer precise suggestions and focuses for a rewrite. That’s always something I’m happy to respond to – as I’d much rather know definite details of what I need to do to get to acceptance than have to work it out from generalised statements.

So I submitted again, holding my breath even more (if that were possible!), and was more than thrilled when the all-important yes came back from Aleks. Being the consummate professional that I am (as if …), I promptly leapt up and down screaming and danced round my computer for a while. I only hope the neighbours weren’t too startled!…

Since then, I’ve calmed down a bit (thank goodness …), contracts have been signed, the original title of the story (In the Silence of The Heart) has been changed to the snappier The Heart’s Greater Silence (see above), and I’ve been both astonished and delighted to suddenly be part of an actual pre-publication marketing drive. Such a thing has never happened to me before! The lovely and enthusiastic Chris Hawkins has helped me prepare a general interview which can be altered to suit the circumstances, and I’m in the middle of producing five or six blog posts that can be used for a blog tour, again depending on circumstances. I’ve also given her a list of giveaways of my previous work as competition prizes. I’m finding it all very exciting, and I’m fully convinced that, because of their focused and professional approach, Riptide are going to make a very big splash (sorry!) in the m/m arena and very soon.

So, The Heart’s Greater Silence is out. I’m planning my next submission already and I’m delighted to be part of the new wave (ha!) of m/m writers and readers. Bring it on. – Aleks Voinov

Here’s the blurb from The Heart’s Greater Silence

Mark isn’t sure he believes in love, especially when he finds himself torn between two very different men: his reliable boyfriend, Craig, and his illicit lover and priest, Richard.

Mark knows what he should do, but he can’t bring himself to give Richard up. The sex with Richard is unlike anything he’s ever known with Craig, and he hungers for it as much as—if not more than—the truer intimacy he finds in his boyfriend’s arms.

When Craig discovers his betrayal, Mark is forced to look at his life more closely, but the path to self-knowledge is never an easy one. Richard seeks the way back to God, but Mark finds no solace there. Can he ever discover the truth of his own soul, or is he too afraid of what he will—or won’t—find inside his heart?

Read an excerpt and purchase A Heart’s Greater Silence here.

Anne’s contest and prizes:

1. I have one contest per stop – with the prize being a backlist ebook giveaway for one commenter.

2. I also have a cumulative competition throughout the blog tour involving answering 3 questions from HGS – with the prize being 3 backlist ebooks for one commenter from the tour as a whole. The questions are

• (a) What item of his trade is Richard wearing when Mark sees him in church?
• (b) When Craig discovers Mark and Richard together, what does he do just before leaving?
• (c) What action does Mark take at the end of the story?

3.  One signed cover flat and magnet for one commenter per stop – with this NOT being the winner of Item 1 (see above)

4. One gift certificate to be drawn at the end of the tour – with this NOT being the winner of Item 2 (see above).

Email address: albrooke@me.com

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Click cover to read excerpt and purchase

Please join Anne for her The Heart’s Greater Silence Virtual Book Tour. She has lots of stops, which gives you lots of ways to win.

You’ll want to purchase The Heart’s Greater Silence as she has a great contest involving questions about the story.

Here’s all the details:

Anne’s contest and prizes:

1. I have one contest per stop – with the prize being a backlist ebook giveaway for one commenter.

2. I also have a cumulative competition throughout the blog tour involving answering 3 questions from HGS – with the prize being 3 backlist ebooks for one commenter from the tour as a whole. The questions are

• (a) What item of his trade is Richard wearing when Mark sees him in church?
• (b) When Craig discovers Mark and Richard together, what does he do just before leaving?
• (c) What action does Mark take at the end of the story?

3.  One signed cover flat and magnet for one commenter per stop – with this NOT being the winner of Item 1 (see above)

4. One gift certificate to be drawn at the end of the tour – with this NOT being the winner of Item 2 (see above).

Stop back here on February 15 for an exclusive post from Anne.

Click banner for full schedule

Why we bought it – Blacker than Black

Okay, Blacker than Black and I have history. I’ve known Rhi for ages online, or what counts as ages online – several years. One of those random people you just click with.  Rhi’s one hard-bitten warrior, but most of all, Rhi’s one of the strongest writers I know.

As it goes, I beta-read Blacker than Black. I’ve since deleted the feedback I gave on the novel, but I’m pretty sure it was mostly “oh wow” anyway. I read a great deal, so it’s rare for a book to haunt me for months or even years. This is the real stuff, in many ways. It’s unflinchingly honest, and it makes an interesting point about gender. It’s a crime novel, an urban fantasy novel where energy vampires have taken over and where some people sell their chi – their life force, their energy (not blood) – to survive. The cityscapes are all cyberpunk-ish, but with a dreamy, and then claustrophic feel that draws you in.

The main character, Black, is a nightwalker – a prostitute selling chi to vampires. As johns feed from him, he takes some of their chi for himself. Being a chi-thief puts him on the vampires’ wanted list, however, and an old enemy from the past makes it all even more interesting.

Blacker than Black is a book you start a publisher for. As the book’s main character is unusual in terms of sex and gender, it took a while for any publisher to recognize how good this is, when I seriously thought that this should be snapped up by the big guns out there. They didn’t, and I loathed that. We started Riptide to publish books we love, regardless of how many copies we think they’ll sell, and this is one of them.

Riptide is emphatically not “just” a gay press – we do like books a lot that examine questions of gender beyond “male” and “female”, and  this is a mission statement that all partners strongly believe in. Blacker exemplifies the type of book I want to have more of as a publisher: it’s intelligent, well-written, riveting on the plot level, and it asks some hard questions – without being preachy at all. You can read this for the examination of gender, of course, but you’d be missing out on a fascinating urban fantasy novel. I hope you’ll love this as much as I do.

Prizes:

Individual: One randomly selected commenter at each stop will receive a signed cover card and magnet. Open to all, regardless of location (winner selected from all comments posted to blog at 11:59pm EST).

Tour: Two winners to be selected at random from drawing of all comments on tour (entry ending Feb. 2^nd, 11:59pm EST – comments with date/time stamps after this time will not be counted). Restricted to mainland US and Canada only, for shipping purposes. First winner will receive an autographed tote bag and pen, signed cover flat, and large magnet. Second winner will receive a t-shirt (size XL), pen, signed cover flat, and small magnet.

Exclusive Excerpt From “Blacker Than Black”

Chapter Eleven: One Step Too Far

I know from experience that when the aura weakens, the mind scrambles to find different paths to travel. Paths of less resistance within the brain. Memories. And the pictures flash across a Nightwalker’s vision like waking dreams.

This party is pushing me too far. Being in physical contact with Jhez helps. Our energy bleeds together when we touch, so she’s taking the brunt of all the dips into my aura. Despite the glares Garthelle tosses at the most daring of his guests, they still tug shards from my stomach where I’ve pooled my chi. It feels like they’re skinning me one sliver at a time, inch by excruciating inch, until they withdraw their hands. I want to scream.

Every time one of them moves away, pictures flash through my mind. Memories, old ones. Not all of them pleasant. Things I haven’t thought about in years. I see the house we lived in when we were young. When we still had parents, a normal life. Before the world crumbled down around our ears and reformed itself into this nightmare of existence we now know.

Saturday mornings full of mindless cartoon entertainment, sharing a bowl of sugary cereal with Jhez, curled up on the couch. The sunlight of a cloudless summer day warming our skin as we jump through the sprinkler in the backyard. The sound of dogs barking, children’s laughter. That unmistakable smell of summertime, of green growing things and the damp cool feel of the turf and soil against the soles of my feet.

Another hand flutters over my abdomen, the invasive presence shattering the memories into a thousand sharp shards in my brain. They tumble away into nothingness, and I open my eyes with an involuntary gasp. The ceiling looks very, very far away. As if I’m staring up at it from the bottom of a well. Why a vampire would have fluffy summer clouds painted on the ceiling is beyond my capacity to grasp.

Is that our father, there?

“Did he come back for us, finally?” Something’s wrong in the carriage, the profile. Memories blur with reality, superimposed what was over what is. “Tell him to sod off. Better yet, let him come over here and I’ll tell him.”

Jhez flares her aura in mine, her hand on my chest suddenly haloed a brilliant hue of scarlet. Alarmed but trying to calm me. I recall her doing that before, but couldn’t say when. Just know the sensation is familiar, that blend of emotions, that color, swirling in my aura.

I don’t remember the details. Those days, when he left and didn’t come back, they blur together, skip like one of the old compact discs, scratched beyond redemption. Error—Cannot Read Disc.

“Deep breaths.” My sister’s words soothe as fingers sink into my hair, stroking my scalp. I force myself to inhale as the vampire moves away. Garthelle’s voice reaches me, rumbling on a low register. He sounds tense, angry. I could close my eyes and point directly to where he is without the assistance of his voice. His aura brushes up against mine like the radiant heat from a bonfire on a chilly winter night in the woods.

Like that camping trip we took in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. A harsh place in late November. Why we went then, I will never understand. But the sky, the stars. Never before, and never again since, have I seen so many stars twinkling against the black velvet of the midnight sky. As if someone tossed a million flawlessly cut diamonds across the top of the world. And the sounds, oh, the tranquility of the world without humanity. Not quiet or still, not by any measure. The thrum of bullfrogs, tree frogs, crickets and other nocturnal creatures. It was the most beautiful symphony I’ve ever heard.

The memories string together, broken sporadically by sharp, gouging pain, only to flood over my senses once again. Like the rhythm of the ocean’s tide. I lose myself in it, until I no longer know where I am, or when. The ceiling isn’t a clear summer day anymore, but the pitch of deep night, scattered with stars that wink back at me. Like Garthelle’s eyes, when he’s laughing at a joke whose punch line only he can truly appreciate.

I let my eyes slide closed because I can’t begin to comprehend how he could have had the ceiling repainted so quickly. It confuses me, makes my pulse pound in my ears. I remind myself to take another deep breath, and block everything out. Memories are fine with me. I’d rather live in the past anyways.

It comes in flashes, suddenly. Our mother, smiling. Humming a lullaby I can’t remember the words to. Staring blindly at the holo-news, rocking in a weaving, faintly circular motion that’s at once hypnotic and disturbing.

Watching her. Knowing that father wouldn’t be coming back. He wouldn’t save us. Wouldn’t protect us. He’d walked away. Gone. Easier to detach and begin again, apparently.

Jhez and I were curled on the couch together. Side by side that time, not like this. The disparity is jarring. It separates me from the crushing emotion of the memories I keep locked away in a deep, far corner for good reason.

Yet I’m far from at peace with my present existence. Satisfaction is fleeting—brief glimpses and stuttered moments. The glow of a coupe in the boulevard luminescence.  The full moon, high in the sky between the skyscrapers, sliding in and out of stringy autumn clouds.

Everything has changed. But nothing has. If the uprising had never occurred, if vampires still walked society in secret, where would that have left me and Jhez? So different from everyone around us even then—just as we are now. We still hide what we are. Not of one, not of the other. So we’ve learned to keep our heads down, blend in. Survival, and all that jazz. People see what they expect to see. Thankfully, so do vamps. No vamp-blood would willingly live on the street, after all. Wouldn’t call it easy, but it was the path of least resistance. One small decision after another. One small concession leads to the next.

And all the sudden you don’t recognize where you are anymore.

I don’t think Garthelle even realizes why we’re different. I guess you could borrow the term dhampyre to apply to us. Our mother wasn’t one of them. She was human, and died like one easily enough. Our father is another story.

Our father, whose likeness whispers to me from the stranger across the room. She throws a glance our way, here and there. I ignore her. Pretend not to notice.

We don’t really know who or what our father was, aside from a vamp. Vincent Noir, face plastered on the media holos almost constantly during the disclosure. The annals of history . . . well. That’s all controlled by them now. And only their ilk has access to it. Humanity is considered a step down the evolutionary ladder. Not worth the effort to educate us, or anything of that nature. We’re so short-lived, for starters. Why would they bother wasting their resources, right?

Don’t forget to leave a comment with your email address to enter the drawings! Look for the final excerpt that picks up where this one leaves off, tomorrow at Emme Addams’ blog. Or, if you can’t wait, get your own copy of “Blacker Than Black” over here at Riptide.

For more info on Rhi’s writings:

Email address: RhiAnon.Etzweiler@gmail.com

Website

Blog

Twitter: @musefodder

Facebook Profile: here

Goodreads Profile: here

Amazon Author Page: here

Google+ Profile: here

Get “Dark Edge of Honor” written with Aleksandr Voinov here

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About Pretty Monsters

I love throwing the fantastic and the mundane together, so putting the mouth of hell and a convenience store side by side seemed like a natural thing to do. I love writing horror, and I love writing comedy, but I have to admit that the task of putting them together can be daunting and very tricky. Still, I love the Evil Dead movies, especially two and three, where they really embraced the humor of the films (the first was, as Joe Bob Briggs -or was it Stephen King? – said, “Spam in a cabin”, i.e. a slaughter-fest), and the end of three, where we see a brief snippet of Ash back at his assistant manager job at the S-Mart, could be looked at as inspiration for the overall Josh of the Damned series. After all, what would happen if Ash had to keep juggling his demon killing “job” with his mundane day job?

A key difference is Josh is no demon killer, nor is he an assistant manager. He’s much lower on the totem pole, and as much as I hate to use the term “slacker”, that’s exactly what Josh is. He works a terrible job that he knows is a terrible job, but it doesn’t require much from him, and since he has no real ambition, that suits him just fine. I’m not sure what my inspiration for Josh is, beyond  simply wondering what an employed drifter might be like. Someone who really doesn’t want responsibility, but needs a check. That’s Josh, who may own a cactus, but certainly not a pet. He’s probably lucky to feed himself most of the time. Like a rock in a river, he’s happy to let life just flow past and over him, except the circumstances at his little crap job force him to become more engaged with the world. A weird world full of zombies and lizard people, but anything less probably wouldn’t have shaken him from his natural torpor. Of course I’ve known people like that, and I have my only tendencies that way as well, but Josh doesn’t like confrontation so much, while I don’t mind at all.

Even when you don’t want to, life changes, and it forces you to change as well. In a way, that’s what the Josh of the Damned series is all about. Josh doesn’t really want to change, but life is going to make him change, in the strangest (and hopefully funniest) way possible.

Blurb for Pretty Monsters:

Read an excerpt and purchase Pretty Monsters here.

Why We Bought It: Peek-a-Boo

In the publishing world, it’s a sad fact that not all series get to continue—sometimes even when the fans absolutely love them. Economics comes into play there rather more than the artistes in us would care to admit, as does the direction the series takes, the author’s ability to sustain quality over the long term, and shifting reader tastes. Fortunately, where the Josh of the Damned series is concerned, I see a long, long future at Quik-Mart #225 (a.k.a. the Late-night Snack-food Stop for the Discerning Monster).

When Peek-a-Boo: Josh of the Damned #2 came across my inbox, I rather understandably stopped whatever else I might have been doing at the time and pounced on it. It was as hilarious as I’d hoped it might be—a laugh-out-loud continuation of the saga of Josh Caplan, utterly unflappable young checkout clerk and, apparently, monster magnet. He’d already attracted a hottie vampire boyfriend, and now he seemed to have caught the eye of a walking rug monster . . . to absolutely hilarious result. I also quite loved the way Andrea turned the concept of the monster on its ear in Peek-a-Boo, which I can’t really talk about more without spoiling, but suffice it to say, she brought home the concept that the real monsters in the world aren’t always the things slithering out of the hell portal at 3 a.m. for a bag of Fritos.

Much like Pretty Monsters: Josh of the Damned #1, Peek-a-Boo is a short short—about 3,600 words, or fifteen or so pages. But each page packs such a comic punch, there was no way we could leave this little gem unpublished. Even better, there’s much more to come in the Josh of the Damned world, and the next installment will feature not one but three stories, giving you a triple dose of hilarity and a big insight into why Josh is more important to both the Quik-Mart and the Hell dimension that shops there.

Until then, may the lovesick yeti keep you warm through the winter wait.

Blurb for Peek-A-Boo:

As night-shift clerk at the go-to Quik-Mart for monsters with the munchies, Josh Caplan believes he’s seen it all. Battling lizard men, werewolves chasing cars in the parking lot . . . nothing fazes Josh anymore.

Or so he thinks, at least, until a yeti with poor communication skills drops a dead skunk on the checkout counter. Josh can’t figure what a living, breathing shag carpet wants with him, or why it won’t leave him alone no matter how hard he ignores it. But hey, at least it seems harmless . . . if perhaps a little slow on the draw.

But Sasquatch is plenty fast when two of Josh’s human customers try to out-monster the monsters. Times are strange when creatures from the hell portal save the day, but in the protective hands of a lovesick yeti and a sexy vampire boyfriend, Josh realizes that maybe his new normal isn’t so bad after all.

Read excerpt and purchase Peek-A Boo here.

Question for the Grand Prize:

What two things does the yeti try to give Josh? Simple, but you’ll have to have read the story.

The Grand Prize – The Infected series ebook collection

Send the answer to the question to aspeed2@gmail.com

Put the name of the blog and Contest Answer in the subject line.

They can send as many entries as they’d like. Contest ends January 20.

We’re proud to announce that Riptide has been nominated, in several categories, by readers at Love Romances Cafe, for their Best of 2011 awards. Because the nominations come from readers, which makes them extra special.

Voting details will be announced in the next week or so. Please stay tuned for all the instructions on how to vote.

Please help us congratulate all our nominees.

The Return of Christmas

I can’t say that I’m a Christmassy person; Christmas pretty much stopped for me when I was twenty. And even before that, thanks to my extended family that always chose Christmas as a Great Opportunity to do power plays and intrigue and trade insults and pay each other back for thirty-year old pains, I can’t say I’ve enjoyed very many Christmases.

My mother died when I was twenty. She died in late November, which means I spent the next years grieving (harder) whenever the end of the year was coming up. It’s easy to fall out of the Christmas habit that way.

I’ve had some good Christmases, though, with new loves or good friends, huddling together in the face of toxic families or the endless boredom of “not much happening” between the years, as we call the period from Christmas to early January.

I spent a few Christmases with my roleplaying group; that was fun.  Another one I spent revising my very first published novel, and yet another one putting the final touches to my MA thesis. Working on major milestones in your life is a terrific way to pass the empty time when you’re single.

I tended to work shifts through Christmas – I was either the single person on the team manning the battle station when the others were going home to their kids, or the student who really needed the holiday bonus. I’ve made sure that other people had a good time – working in the “hospitality industry” and as a security guard. Guiding frail old ladies to their places in the concert hall was, in any case, a much better feeling than eating lobsters with the extended family that bitched and whined at each other. Getting that grateful smile and a pat on the hand from the old ladies was actually Christmassy in itself.

I remember the magical Christmas time as a kid, though, tied very much into memories of walks in the snow. I remember being small, my mother and my step father to my left and right, walking in a forest, the fir trees heavy with snow, every single one of them looking like a magical Christmas tree to my child’s mind. The feeling of snow crunching under my shoes, and my face and hands cold and tingly and all red when we returned from the grey and silver and black to the red and gold warmth again. That magical glow, how snow makes the whole world bright, even at night, and the hush that settles on the world, as everything slows down, expecting the turning of the sun.

That kind of snow, several inches that fall overnight and can be turned into snowmen, seemed for a long time to be confined to my childhood. Last year, though, we had, second time in a row, a cold spell here in South-East England. Snow. Loads of snow. So much snow that nobody could cope. Not London, not the cities around it.

I was by then a vastly overworked and underpaid financial editor of a magazine, working for a company that seemed determined to suck every thought, every moment, every breath out of me as fast as they could. I never took holidays, because the workload would never diminish anyway, and I was ambitious and thought, well, that’s how it’s gotta be, apparently.

Then December came round. Five months into the new job, I’d almost accepted that working sixty, seventy or more hours a week was normal (to be honest, I didn’t keep track, I just remember working all the time, early and late and through weekends). I’d accepted that I was unable to sleep very well due to the stress – that I’d always run around frantically, that I’d snap at my partner and eat junk food and skip exercise. No time, no time, gotta make your mark, can’t disappoint the boss who’s working even harder than you, race to get everything done before the deadline, you’re the only one who can do this. (Luckily, I was successful at a job interview and was waiting for the bank to make an offer and sort out my contract.)

Then, snow fell. No buses. No trains. No meetings. I couldn’t get to work. I sent my team the photos I shot outside to prove that there was no way in hell I could get into work. I still have those: Cars looking like little gentle hills in the road. Arm-long icicles hanging from the roof of my house. I’d never seen icicles like that anywhere I lived. For weeks, no trains, no busses, empty shelves in the supermarket, because the trucks couldn’t get through to restock.

In the evening, I’d take my partner by the hand and have a walk in the fresh snow, feet and hands and faces cold after a while, and us just enjoying the quiet and the peace. Suddenly, the magic and light and hush – my blessed childhood snow – was back, in full force. For me, soaking up those snow-laden branches and icicles, and the crisp, ice-cold clear black sky with frosted diamonds, the scrunching snow was like Christmas.

Returning home – home, what an idea, but we’d bought a house six months earlier, so I was actually coming Home – closing the door, skin prickling from the sudden warmth, my partner at my side, I knew Christmas had returned to my life for real.

From Casa Voinov to your home, Merry Christmas.