They’d been all around Toby’s old neighborhood, fueled by frozen soda drinks and hot dogs and caramel corn from various corner stores. They’d shot hoops, slipping through the gap in the chain-link fence around the school and sharing a ball with a handful of boys and girls around Josie’s age. It was houses more than tenement buildings, but it felt something like home to Ven.

Now, standing on the street corner across from the garage where Toby had followed his dad to work as a little kid, they were deciding which way to go. Further downtown was just starting to light up — bars and strip clubs and XXX shops putting their neon lights on — and the other way was back to where they’d parked the car that afternoon. Ven put an arm around Toby’s waist. “Don’t tell me you didn’t go down that way.” He pointed toward all the neon.

Toby laughed a little and nodded. “Not ’til I was a little older. But, yeah, I went down there. Want to go explore the nightlife?” He tipped his head, grinning at Ven, his expression just a little bit wicked.

That was a fine, fine look. Ven stole a kiss, so fast, less than he wanted but more than he should have. “Let’s go. I’m up for anything.” He meant it.

Toby led him down the street toward all the glowing neon. Past a strip club decorated with bright pink outlines of women’s legs was a similar club with men doing the stripping. They peeked inside, but didn’t actually go in. Instead, Toby led Ven into a bar a little further down the street, one with people surging in and out of the door like waves on a beach. They squeezed past the crowd, paid the cover charge, stopped just inside to let their eyes adjust to the dim lighting.

Music was the same in clubs like this anywhere. They could well have been back home, they could have been at home any time in the last ten years; the only things that changed were the hairstyles and the drinks. The music was too loud to tell the difference between now and then. “Buy you a drink?” He looked around, marking where the exits were, the stairs down behind the bar, the dance floor, the pool tables. It looked good.

Toby didn’t answer right away. When Ven looked at him, he was looking Ven up and down, slowly. “Yeah,” he said, a little grin tugging at the corners of his lips. “I think I’d like that.” Toby flashed Ven a teasing grin and then headed for the bar. He didn’t look back to see if Ven was following.

Ven followed him to the bar and caught him up against it with one hand on either side of him. “What’ll you have?” he murmured in Toby’s ear.

“Whatever’s on tap,” Toby said, turning so that Ven could see the freckles scattered over one cheek. “Unless you’ve got a suggestion for something better…?”

“Not yet.” God, Ven loved being this close. He could smell Toby’s warmth, see the details of his beautiful face, his flawless skin, the softness of his full mouth. “You are so gorgeous,” he breathed against Toby’s ear. When the bartender got close enough, Ven made himself look away. “Two draughts.” He could feel Toby through their clothes, knew in his head what it would feel like to press up against his lover naked. He was so damn lucky.

A little movement brushed Toby’s body back against Ven’s, a little tilt of Toby’s head bared his neck as he glanced back at Ven. “You come here often?”

“With pink!” Charlotte reminded all of them. Until Momma had suggested it, Ven hadn’t really been planning on having a wedding, much less on having white, yellow, and pink involved, but if it made the girls happy, he sure as hell wasn’t saying no.

“With pink.” Toby laughed and gave Ven a quick squeeze, then headed over to the racks of dresses. “How could we forget the pink?”

“You can forget pink?” Brenda picked Charlotte up with a sigh and shook her head, then laughed, kissing Charlotte on the cheek. “Okay. Nothing stretchy. No sequins. No feathers.” She looked over her shoulder at Ven. “For the girls, that is. Don’t let me interfere with anything you two might have picked out for the occasion.”

Toby gave a little snort and shook his head, letting Josie drag him over to see the lacy, sparkly dress she was insisting was “just perfect, Daddy, really.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Toby said, and pulled the dress down off the rack to hold it up against her. Josie looked down at herself and sort of harrumphed, and then her gaze lit on something else down the aisle and Toby was left to put the dress away and chase after her.

“I wanted feathers, but I was voted down,” Ven said dryly. “Charlotte, why don’t you come look down this aisle. I think it’s your size.” It had taken him a while to figure out that the sizes were only theoretically sorted by age. Charlotte was a lot smaller than some girls her age, and had ended up swimming in some of the clothes he’d tried on her the first time he’d taken her shopping.

“Okay.” Suddenly, Charlotte was all business. She wriggled until Brenda put her down, then towed Brenda by the hand toward the row where Ven was waiting. “I want pink,” she asserted, for possibly the millionth time since she’d been able to talk. Almost every choice had the same answer.

Toby steered Josie toward them, hands on her shoulders, letting her carry the mass of white lace and yellow taffeta she’d found. “I know we’re not going to get you two into the same kind of dress,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of Josie’s head, “but maybe we can find dresses that match.”

“We can dream,” Brenda said dryly, as Charlotte started poking at dresses that caught her fancy.

Ven was ahead of her by a rack and carefully moved a pink-rosette-covered, floor-length pageant dress out of sight. “How about we start with just looking at a couple,” he suggested. That always worked with Cake. Cake wanted to have a choice, but sure wasn’t up to choosing one thing out of twenty. “And if we don’t like any of those, we’ll get more.” He held a short pink taffeta and tulle dress out for Charlotte to inspect.

Charlotte squealed and hugged it to her chest. “I want to try it on!”

Brenda gave Ven a long look. “The first one? The first?”

Ven tried to look apologetic. “Sorry?”

“You can take her shoe shopping this fall is all I’m saying. That’s four hours I could use on something important, like the spa.” Brenda pointed toward the change room. “This way. Come on girls, Daddy and Ven will bring a few more.”

Find it here!

Becoming Us: Bonus Material

This print collection includes Renovations: In a Family Way, Renovations 4: Full House, Renovations 5: Mending Fences, and Renovations 6: Coming Home, as well as a bonus novelette — “A Renovations Addition: Wedding Day” — that picks up where Coming Home left off.

Find it here!

Renovations: Bonus Material

It’s been a good week for me. For all of the busy (and there’s been a lot of busy), I’ve gotten some work done on Percussion, including a detailed outline that will take me through the rest of the story. Hooray!

Also, Anah found a new review of Renovations 6: Coming Home at Joyfully Reviewed: “If Coming Home is the last of the Renovations chasers, it’s the perfect ending. If not, I look forward to more!” (read the review here)

Yesterday, Anah and I were interviewed at Jessewave’s blog. You can find the interview here. The discussion is still going on in comments, and we’re having a great time with it.

Speaking of Jessewave’s blog, Pandora Project: Runaway Star was chosen as one of their Favorite Gay Novels, as was Anah’s Uneven!

I’m also honored that Other Magical Creatures, including my novella “God of Wine”, has made it through the first round of Elisa’s Rainbow Awards.

Oh! And Becoming Us, which will be out next week, is on Dear Author’s list of October Recommended Reads. Hooray! It’s always an honor to find that my/our work actually works for someone, especially enough that they’d be comfortable recommending it to other people.

I have other big news, but I’m waiting until the ink is dry before I say anything. Call me superstitious, I don’t care.

“If COMING HOME is the last of the Renovations chasers, it’s the perfect ending. If not, I look forward to more!”
-Nannette, Joyfully Reviewed (read the review here.)

Tatterdemalion is getting ready to go into its second-to-last round of edits. (We have it split into three documents, and this is going to be the last round of real changes, then we’re going to put it into one document and do a final proofreading pass.)

Once that’s finished, we’ll take a break from editing to write the bonus story for Renovations II: Framework. Then it’s back to editing with Parallax, the second Pandora Project story, which needs a couple more scenes added, and Equilibrium.

And then we can finally move on to some new projects. Anah has a couple stories in the works that I know she’s excited to get back to, and I have at least two projects that need my attention. And together, we have several projects that we can choose from.

Generally, we each have one story of our own going, and one story together, at any one time. Unfortunately, things kind of piled up here. We had Equilibrium and Parallax to be edited, and then Tatterdemalion came back and our priorities shifted to that. And then the Becoming Us edits came in, and we needed to do that before we could do anything else.

Things will settle down in the next few days, though. Anah’s been working very hard on Tatterdemalion, and I expect we’ll be finished with it in the next few days, and then Parallax and Equilibrium shouldn’t take long to move either.

…so I should get moving.

To Do
Revise “Equilibrium” (with Anah Crow)
Revise “Parallax” (with Anah Crow)
Revise “Tatterdemalion” (with Anah Crow)
Write the second Renovations bonus story (with Anah Crow)

“I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a complex relationship in terms of the family dynamics and the stressful effects of mixing  business, family and personal matters and I look forward to reading about the new adventures of Toby and Ven.”
-Wave, Reviews By Jessewave (read the review here.)

Stop by and say hello! Who knows, there might even be a contest and some prizes…

“It’s a crime to let Momma’s buttermilk pie just sit there,” Ven murmured.

Toby rested a hand on his belly and hummed a little, then started to wriggle up off the couch. “I’d love some more pie. Anybody else want some? I’ll help carry it out.”

“Me, too, please!” Cake put his hand up. He wasn’t ever not in the mood for pie.

“I’ll share yours.” Ven helped Toby up off the couch, and if he accidentally groped a little, it was really an accident, not that he didn’t enjoy it just fine. “Maybe a little ice cream, too?” He gave Toby his best puppy look.

Toby laughed and said, “I’ll see what I can do.” He turned to Poppy and asked, “Do you want some pie, too?”

“No, thanks, son.” Poppy patted his belly—it wasn’t much of a belly; Poppy worked almost full time with Ven now and it was hard work—and sighed. “I’m getting too old to polish off Momma’s pies. Good thing you boys are around to fill in for me. I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee, though, but instant’s fine. Don’t trouble Momma with it.”

“I put the coffee maker on, Ben,” Momma called out to him. She could hear him telling people not to inconvenience her on his account from a block away.

Toby grinned and shook his head, then headed into the kitchen to join Momma. He came back just a few minutes later with two plates and said to Poppy, “Coffee will be out in just a minute.” As he sat down, he passed one plate to Cake. The one he kept had a big scoop of ice cream on it.

Ven loved seeing Toby in the old place. He was glad Momma and Poppy were moving, but he was grateful to get to see his man in his own childhood home. Everything was pretty empty now, all the old kids’ stuff was given away—Ven had spent the day before moving almost a house worth of furniture from one part of the family to the others and redistributing it all—but it was still soothing to Ven’s heart to see Toby here.

Ven put one arm across the back of the couch so that he could snuggle Toby up and held out the other to take the plate while Toby got settled. He could remember a time when he’d worried that he’d never find someone else like him, much less someone who loved him. And the idea that he could bring that man home for Thanksgiving dinner… impossible. Toby sat down and Ven pulled his lover close, leaning his head on Toby’s shoulder for a moment.

Toby’s lips pressed against his forehead, soft and warm. “You okay?” Toby murmured, quiet enough that Ven was the only one who could hear over the TV.

“Yeah.” Ven didn’t lean on Toby much in any way, but when he did, it had to be one of the best feelings in the world. “Just thinking about all the times I sat here without you,” he said, just as quietly. He straightened to kiss Toby on the cheek and put the plate down so they could share dessert before the ice cream melted entirely. There wasn’t much more to say than that; he knew Toby would understand the rest. For that, he snuck another little kiss from Toby’s pale, freckled cheek and nuzzled there.

“Equilibrium” is finished. I’ve done my round of revisions, and it’s on the revision pile for Anah now. I really like this one. We took an idea and stripped it down to its bones, and I think we made it work really well.

We wrote a new Jamie&Riaz short story for the Turn of the Screw “Blue Monday” — it’s sort of a story in two parts, and the first part got posted there. The complete story will be posted the next time we host the Torquere LiveJournal: July 9 and 10.

We’re in the middle of revisions for “Tatterdemalion” (if you’ve been watching either of our Twitter feeds, you’ve probably seen us talking about it), and for “Parallax”. The revisions for “Tatterdemalion” are going really well; we’ve figured out how to really strengthen the story with several choice cuts and a bit of rewriting. I’m loving the whole process.

“Parallax” revisions are going along at a more casual pace, but they’re going well, too. I think at least a couple more scenes are going to be added to that one, but I don’t think we’re cutting anything the way we are with “Tatterdemalion.”

Once we get all of that done, we’ll be writing the bonus story for Renovations II: Foundation, the second print collection. And doing the edits for “Becoming Us”, which should be in by then.

It’s going to be a very busy summer!

To Do
Write “At the Corner of Fourth and Honesty” (for Kit Zheng’s project)
Finish “Percussion”
Outline “Dimes for Dying Dreams”
Revise “Equilibrium” (with Anah Crow)
Revise “Parallax” (with Anah Crow)
Revise “Tatterdemalion” (with Anah Crow)
Write the second Renovations bonus story (with Anah Crow)