Sirius from Dear Author granted Want Me a Recommended Read, saying “I think this is one of the most unusual books that I have ever read in the mm genre, and I highly recommend it, but you should be sure that you are up for reading a dark story.” How cool is that? You can read the rest of the review here.
Okay. Bad news first, yeah?
Bad news: As you’ve probably noticed, Chains wasn’t out on Christmas Eve. But I will do my best to have a January release date.
Good news: Want Me has been picked up by Loose Id! That means it’ll be out in e-book format soon. How cool is that? The only thing that bums me out is that I had to take down the awesome cover art from the first edition, which had been created for me by the amazing Ulf. On the bright side, I’m looking forward to seeing the new interpretation from Loose Id.
To give the first cover a proper send-off, I’m giving away all the Want Me prints I have left. They include two 4×6 glossies, four 8.5×11 prints on card stock, five 3×5 prints on card stock, and one…well I don’t know what it is exactly. It’s translucent and has a sticker strip on the left-hand side, so I’m guessing it’s meant to be slipped inside notebooks or folders. I don’t even remember buying it. XD
And now for some more good news!
One Good Hand/One Good Year received an Honorable Mention from the Rainbow Awards! Sci-fi/fantasy category.
An army of cats took over deviantART for April Fool’s Day. Random thumbnails were replaced propaganda posters and clicking on anything pretty much meant you were going to get some weird fact about cats. Did you know that a cat’s jaw is designed in such a way that makes it physically impossible for it to grind its sharp little teeth? Well, ya do now.
When I first saw it, I was sorta meh on the whole deal. Cats? Really? Not a fan. The mudkip invasion was much better.
Then I saw The Note. And The Note said that anyone who submitted a cat picture would get a cat BADGE. Oh, and there was something about getting 15000 submissions in order to release the dA logo from captivity, but the important thing here was the BADGE.
I saw The Note late. I hadn’t drawn anything in a year and I’d certainly never drawn a cat. I thought briefly about making my brother wear my neko-ear cap and taking a photo, but then realized he would have put a pox on all our houses if I posted it. So I figured I’d draw the Cheshire Cat. Pretty easy, yeah? I mean, most of the time he’s all face anyway.
Drew the line art. Had fun with the eyes. Remembered that my scanner has been broken since January. Took a picture with my phone and uploaded the sucker anyway. For some reason it’s on its side and I have no idea why. It’s quite well-behaved on my computer. Cheshire tease.
But I got my badge! Everything I dreamed it would be –> 
I love internet badges and stickers. You can tell that just looking at my stories page. Every time a reviewer awards a badge or sticker to one of my books, it is on my site as fast as I can code it. Often in varying sizes depending on the page. I make a conscious effort to not learn exactly what GetGlue is because I see all my twitter friends earning stickers there and I have a feeling I’d never leave. I would definitely never write again.
But back to the cat badge. Once I got it, I figured I should at least finish the original picture. So I did. Remembered *again* that my scanner is busted. Sighed loudly in that frequency that only moms can hear.
She asked me what was wrong. I told her about my scanner (she was there when it bit the dust so my story of yearning packed quite the angsty punch) and suggested I try it again and see if it works now.
My words were literally, “Yeah, Mom. Maybe Jesus will come down from on high just to give my scanner a sweet, gentle kiss, raising the machine from the dead because it’s Easter.”
I laughed. She laughed. We both laughed.
So anyway here’s the scanned pic:
It was, ah, posted on the day after Easter. Scanned on Sunday.
Heh heh heh.
Heh heh.
Heh.
There you have it. There is a God. Although considering the absolute creepy nature of the image, I’m sort of inclined to believe that it was the devil making sweet sweet love to my scanner. That or Holy Humor has a bit of twistyness to it. Makes for an interesting afterlife, either way. 😉
I have an excerpt up for One Shot! You can check it out, along with the blurb and other good stuff, on the story’s page on my site: http://rowanmcbride.com/stories/oneshot/. Let me know what you think. 🙂
Lone has a page now for the Recommended Read stickers it has received since its release, as well as the various screencaps I couldn’t resist taking because I’m a digital packrat and {sigh} a geek (although, on a totally unrelated note, my geek card has been taken away, upgraded, taken away, and upgraded again several times over the past week, lol). Check out the brand spankin’ new awards page at http://rowanmcbride.com/stories/lone/lone_awards.html.
Thank you to everyone who’s read Lone. It’s had an amazing response and it was a pleasure building an awards page for it.
I’m holding a poll on my Yahoo!Group (the platform I use for my newsletter) regarding Want Me. You have to sign up for the mailing list to vote, but it’s a very low traffic list (news only, my record being five updates in one month) and you can always set your preferences to “no mail.” Whatever option you decide, I’d appreciate your input. The link to my newsletter is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rowan_mcbride and the direct link to the poll is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rowan_mcbride/polls.
I think that’s it! I had a fab time at Dragon*Con. I’m planning on posting a more detailed update regarding the convention (plus pics!) on this blog in the next few days. W00t!
Yeah, that New Year’s resolution I made to come up with better blog titles? Not happening.
Last week I participated in an M/M writing workshop at Romance Divas for the Not Going to Conference Conference. I have to admit, I was nervous. I’m still at that stage where I believe 80% of writing is magic, so I was unsure whether I had anything constructive to offer. But as we settled into a groove, I found I had tips to share on characterization, point of view, and even writing sex scenes. Working with the other authors was a lot of fun, and even though I was one of the writers giving the workshop, I also learned a lot.
I also popped in on other workshops. Sasha White’s “Coping With Burnout” thread turned out to be a godsend for me because I was rocketing in that direction. Truth is, I’ve been feeling off my game lately and spending a week talking about writing really helped. Now I’m going to try and take things a little easier for a while, as well as write some stories for fun. And not feel like a slacker when I watch other writers do their thing. Very important.
In keeping with my whole relaxation theme, I finally got to read volumes five and six of Totally Captivated! LOVE it. Recommend and was sad to see it end:
The second quarter stats are in for Lone, and it turns out I made the top ten list at Amber Allure:
1) Allergies by T. A. Chase (Gay/Werewolf)
2) Lone by Rowan McBride (Gay/Werewolf)
3) Satisfaction by M. L. Rhodes (Gay/Contemporary)
4) Bottom’s Up: Kinky Orgasm by Amanda Young (Gay/Contemporary)
5) Most Likely To Succeed by Shawn Lane (Gay/Contemporary)
6) David’s Dilemma by Lynn Lorenz (Gay/Contemporary)
7) Bring The Heat by M. L. Rhodes (Gay/Contemporary)
8) Car Wash by Shawn Lane (Gay/Contemporary)
9) Carey’d Away by J. M. Snyder (Gay/Contemporary)
10) Betrayed by Cassie Stevens (Gay/Contemporary)
How cool is it that the top two slots are filled with werewolf stories?
Jumping to another subject (this is a ramble, after all), if you’re like me and enjoy bishies and muscle, please check out Yayoi Neko’s art at http://thundertori.deviantart.com/. I love the way she combines power and beauty in her work.
In totally random fun, Katrina Strauss has posted a vid from a Japanese game show on her blog: Bloggin’ it with Katrina Strauss. As a result, I’m currently trying to find a way to work the term “acrylic kiss” into a story. Lol.
I feel like an amazing amount of stuff has happened over the past two weeks. Of course, when I start to write it all down, it starts to get fuzzy. Hopefully, if I remember more, and it’s interesting enough to write about, I’ll think of a better blog title. 🙂
I’m way late in sharing this, but for the month of May I was on the Amber Allure best seller list:
1. Lone
– Rowan McBride
(Gay / Werewolf)
2. David’s Dilemma
– Lynn Lorenz
(Gay / Contemporary)
3. Bottom’s Up:
A Kinky Orgasm
– Amanda Young
(Gay / Contemporary)
4. 629 Miles To Love
– Fae Sutherland &
Marguerite Labbe
(Gay / Contemporary)
5. Tangled Web
– Cassie Stevens
(Gay / Suspense)
6. Satisfaction
– M. L. Rhodes
(Gay / Contemporary)
7. Sins Of Arrogance
– India Harper
(Gay / Suspense)
8. NEG UB2
– Rick R. Reed
(Gay / Contemporary)
9. Bounty Of The Heart
– J. M. Snyder
(Gay / Historical)
10. Playing The Field:
Play On
– J. M. Snyder
(Gay / Contemporary)
I’m siked and honored to be at number one. You guys rock.
Lone also made it as high as the number four slot on All Romance eBooks. I took screencaps of both, and will be putting those up on my website as soon as I get a chance, because I’m a geek that way. Sigh.
Cherry on top? Received a review from Fallen Angel Reviews a few days ago. They gave Lone a Recommended Read. 🙂
All this warrants a happy dance, right? I think so too:
Note: This blog was originally published on my MySpace blog, January 31, 2009.
I’ve been nominated for a Cupid and Psyche Award. How cool is that? Favorite Erotic Author. Even got a cool new sticker for my website!
I liked it so much that I updated my About Me (http://www.rowanmcbride.com/aboutme/) page just so I could display it on my site. I also finally got around to adding a “Best of Rowan’s Ramblings” section, so now you can read all my best blogs neatly organized by year.
Much thanks to The Romance Studio for the nomination! I’m honored!
Note: This blog was originally published on my MySpace blog, August 10, 2008.
Guess who hit the number 2 spot on Amber Allure’s July best sellers list?
Note: This blog was originally published on my MySpace blog, January 2, 2008.
Paul’s Dream has been nominated in the Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll! If you’ve read the story and liked it, you can vote for it at at http://critters.critique.org/predpoll/novelr.shtml. If you’ve never heard of the story, you can check it out on my site (read the excerpt, buy the book, etc) and if you happen to decide you like the story before January 14th, then please vote. 
W00t! Pretty nice way to kick off the new year, yeah?
Available at Loose Id.
Note: This blog was originally published on my MySpace blog, December 21, 2007.
Okay, that is hands down my worst blog title ever. {sigh} On to the good stuff:
I’ve been a bit of a hermit lately. Did tons of writing, but none of it’s strictly stuff I should be working on at the moment. Then I banged myself up a little (nothing serious) and it sorta hurt to write for a few days. When I felt better, I opted to draw instead of write. This marked the beginning of what I fondly (and not-so-fondly, depending on my mood) refer to as being in Recharge Mode. Logically I know a lot of stuff is getting done—reading, updating the website, sending out an overdue newsletter, returning phone calls so my friends don’t think I’m dead—but often it feels I have very little to show for it because writing is what makes me feel focused, and settled, and productive.
Still, it’s been nice. Even when I realized that my hair vaguely resembled Albert Einstein’s and put on a cowboy hat. You really can’t go wrong with a Stetson.
One of the perks from being in Recharge Mode is that you tend to Google yourself and do all manner of other things that sound dirty without actually being dirty. I got to see what people are saying about me, and most of it’s been pretty good. I managed to plow through 543 unread emails and found some wicked good stuff there as well.
Paul’s Dream is…wow. Doing better than I’d ever expected. It’s even won a few accolades, and I thought I’d share them here because nothing helps a person recharge more than good news. So here they are, in no particular order:
If you read this blog on a regular basis, you already know Mrs. Giggles rated it a Keeper.
The Romance Studio gave it a perfect 5 hearts.
Joyfully Reviewed rated it a Recommended Read.
Romance Junkies awarded the novel a Blue Ribbon.
TwoLips Reviews gave it a Recommended Read and a Reviewer’s Choice Award.
Book Utopia Mom “devoured” the story.
Jennifer Leeland called me “brilliant.”
It all feels surreal in a really really good way. Lots of people had great things to say, and I try to keep a current list of them on my site (which I just updated this past week!), so you can check them out at http://www.rowanmcbride.com/stories/touchingfire/paulsdream/. Just scroll down to the review section of the page. You can also learn about the story, read an excerpt, play a few games, and hit the link that’ll let you buy Paul’s Dream at Liquid Silver Books–http://www.liquidsilverbooks.com/books/paulsdream.htm.
Now I’m returning to the reading phase of my Mode. Ai no Kusabi the novel is finally out. Yeah! So far it’s proving to be a great way to recharge.