Squee! Alexios has a home!

I just got done telling some friends that squeeing wasn't for me, but maybe I will make one little exception. Who am I kidding? I'll make a big exception for this. I just finished the rough draft of "Alexios' Fate" and before the ink was even dry, metaphorically speaking of course, it had a home.

I just signed the contract with Breathless Press and my longest and best work to date should come out later this year!

Part way through writing the first draft of this story, I had an epiphany and suddenly my style improved dramatically. It has now gone through two revisions and exploded from 20K to 35K words. I've had a lot of help along the way, most notably from Deanna Wadsworth and Johnny Miles.

"Alexios' Fate" takes place in iron age Greece. The gods and all their lesser brethren are still very much real.The culture is male driven and the women are kept under wraps so you won't see very many mortal women in my tale. The Muses are a different story. They and the other immortal females were not held to the same restrictions the women were.

The women who do make an appearance in my tale are not the typical run of the mill m/m fiction women. They are neither the supportive best friend who will do anything to see that her BFF catches his man, nor are they the evil bitch who exists to make the man eschew women and crave men instead. My women are women with the cultural expectations for their place in history.

This is the first piece I have written with the intention of submitting it for publication. That effected the way I wrote Alexios' story. All my other pieces were just for fun so I didn't worry about passive voice, "was," "it," "that," etc. I used all the -ly adverbs I wanted. I did however avoid tags so "said" doesn't appear too often.

All in all it's been a totally different writing experience for me. I done more "crafting" of sentences and less just going with whatever I wanted to write. If I typed one of the black listed words, I went back and tried to restructure the sentence in such a way as to do away with that taboo word. Sometimes I couldn't, but often I could. I hope it won't require too much editing to get it up to snuff.

I also had a lot of help from Deanna Wadsworth, the queen of gab. I knew I needed more dialog in this piece and she found places for it I would have never dreamed of. She took a manuscript that I liked and turned it into one I love. She asked me to bring out the paranormal elements and wanted to see more of Apollo. So if you like Apollo's scenes, you can thank her.

I've had lots of help along the way. If you read my first blog post, you will see what a list of people I have to thank for getting here. I'd also like to thank Justyn who read my stories and asked me if I would like to be published. His opinion was the final push needed to get me to admit that I am an author. Now a published author.

Thanks so much to everyone!