The Dark Space series is coming to audio! Plus, have a free short story!

For anyone who loves some snarky Brady and some patient-as-a-saint Cam, I'm delighted to announce that the Dark Space series is coming to audio! 

You can preorder the first book already, here: Audible

It's out on the 29th! 

And I'm sure you've noticed that cover Brady has had a it of a face lift. This is because, unfortunately, the model for original Brady is no longer available for covers. But don't worry, he'll be staying on the book covers! 

I've also got a tiny freebie for everyone today. New Year's Day was written for the When the Smoke Clears anthology which raised money for firefighters and wildlife following the devastating Australian bushfires. 

And now you can get it for free! 

Download the PDF here. 

Download the mobi here. 

Download the epub here. 

And while I'm remembering in awkward promo mode, have you joined my Facebook readers group Lisa Henry's Hangout yet? This month I'm giving away a signed paperback of your choice, and some Fabula storytelling cards. Also, you can cast your vote there for which characters I have to write a short story about when I hit 250 members, and that short story will be exclusive to the group! So far Nick and Jai from Adulting 101 are in the lead! 

Audio titles - coming in 2020

I'm super excited to announce that today I signed a contract with Tantor Media, meaning that in 2020, Anhaga will be coming out in audio. 

And that's not all! I hope fans of the Dark Space series are as happy as I am when I tell you that Brady and Cam are coming to audio as well! 

Thank you to everyone over the past few years who asked about getting Dark Space into audio. This was a huge step into the unknown for me as all these titles are now self-published, but you gave me the boost to get out there and find out if there was a way to make it happen. 

New Release Roundup!

So this is what it feels like to have a productive few weeks... huh. Clearly I should hold onto this, since it will probably never happen again! 

So, in exciting news, Starlight (Dark Space 3) is up for preorder here on Amazon, with other sites to follow in the next few days. It will be out on December 1. 

Brady Garrett is back in space, this time as an unwilling member of a team of humans seeking to study the alien Faceless and their technology. It’s not the first time Brady’s life has been in the hands of the Faceless leader Kai-Ren, and if there’s one thing Brady hates it’s being reminded exactly how powerless he is. Although dealing with the enigmatic Faceless might actually be easier than trying to figure out where he stands with the other humans on board, particularly when one of them is his boyfriend’s ex. 

Cameron Rushton loved the starlight once, but being back on board the Faceless ship forces him to confront the memories of the time he was captured by Kai-Ren, and exactly how much of what was done to him that he can no longer rationalize away. Cam is used to being Brady’s rock, but this time it might be him who needs Brady’s support.  

This time Brady is surrounded by the people he loves most in the universe, but that only means their lives are in danger too. And when Kai-Ren’s fascination with humanity threatens the foundations of Faceless society, Brady and Cam and the rest of the team find themselves thrust into a battle that humans have very little hope of winning, let alone surviving. 

It has been super fun to get back into Brady's POV after all this time, and discover just how much I missed that bad-tempered little ball of angst and angry outbursts! I hope that you guys have missed him too!

In other news, I now have the rights back for Anhaga and it's available now in ebook through all major retailers, and paperback through Amazon. 

And Dauntless, my fun little cozy mystery very much inspired by Norfolk Island, is out at all major retailers, and the paperback will be available through Amazon within the next day or so. 

So it's been a productive few weeks, and for once I have something to show for it! 

Obligatory writing update post:

It has been so long since I actually did anything, let alone told anyone what I was doing, but here's the news! 
Firstly, I've asked Dreamspinner for the rights to Anhaga back. So I'm in the process of that happening, which means that there may be a period when it's unavailable, but I'm going to get it back out again as soon as I can. 
In the meantime, I hope to have a cosy mystery novella to share with you soon, called Dauntless. There's an island, two guys, an old shipwreck, a lost diary,a Labrador who bounces a lot, and (insert suspenseful music here) MURDER... Despite the murder, it's a cute little story, and I'm hoping to have it out some time very soon! 
And in news that I hope nobody was holding their breaths for, because you all would have asphyxiated by now, the third and final book in the Dark Space trilogy will be out soon! Fans of Brady will be pleased to know he's just as much an intractable shit as always The book is called Starlight, and I have it slated for a December release at this stage! I'm super excited to finally have some news to share on that front!

Back out now: The Boy Series, and the Dark Space Series

It's been a hectic kind of few months, but I'm happy to announce at last that the following books are all back up for sale at your preferred vendors: 

The Good Boy

The Boy Who Belonged

Please note that the short story tie-in The Naughty Boy, will be available as part of The Boy Who Belonged! 

And a huge shoutout here to L.C. Chase, who gave us such amazing new covers for this series! 

Dark Space

Darker Space

And for anyone who was waiting on a paperback edition of Darker Space, as soon as the proof arrives and I can check I didn't screw it up, a paperback will be available through Amazon! 

And all my gratitude to Bree Archer, who took the old covers and edited them so I was able to re-use them. I'm delighted I didn't have to ditch cover Brady as part of the process of republishing! 

4 Days To Go!

Darker Space is out on the 13th from Loose Id! 

(I am loving this cover by Mina Carter. Sadly, cover Brady wasn't available this time around, so we found a cover Cam instead!) 

You know what a new release means! It's time for a blog tour. For the chance to win a $20 Amazon gift card, the tour will be making the following stops on the following awesome blogs:

Boy Meets Boy Reviews - October 13

Rainbow Gold Reviews - October 14

Boys In Our Books - October 14

MM Does MM - October 15

J.A. Rock’s blog - October 16

Love Bytes Reviews - October 17

Joyfully Jay - October 17

And for a special extra, and a chance to win an ebook copy of Darker Space, visit Crystal’s Many Reviewers on October 21!

I don't have Attention Deficit Dis...oh! Look! A bunny!

So, it turns out I'm quite easily distracted. If I'm not juggling at least 6 projects at once, I get bored. I like to jump from WIP to WIP to WIP until I get...wait for it...WIPLASH!

That joke was terrible. I apologise unreservedly.

*bows head and performs ritual of abject contrition*

Anyway, at the moment I'm working away on the sequel to Dark Space, as well as my Samoan-Australian policeman story and, with J.A. Rock, a sequel to Mark Cooper versus America, and a bunch of other things from The List. And this was quite enough to keep me busy.

Which is why I will never know why I decided to look through my filing cabinet.

My filing cabinet is a mess. The rail things that the files hang off have been busted for years, so stuff is just shoved in there. Most of it is so old it's typewritten. Or, worse, written in the back of school exercise books. My filing cabinet is basically a cross between a repository for every piece of fiction I've ever written (apart from the stuff that was justifiably destroyed), a nursery for young spiders, a gecko hatchery, and a dust bunny sanctuary.

Anyway, I opened it.

And I found the uncompleted fantasy epic that I began writing in high school. It was surprisingly obsessed with crows. 

source

Also, it's everything you'd expect: cliche piled upon cliche, terrible world building, a meandering plot, and full of so many Mary Sue characters that I want to build a time machine, go back to when I was fifteen, and punch myself in the head.

Also, on the first page, instead of could have had, I wrote  could of had.

As in, of all the things I could have had, I wish it had been basic grammatical knowledge.

So, it's terrible.

But it's not too terrible. Underneath all that terribleness, there's the germ of an interesting idea. And I'm quite excited, because I think I can do something with it. I need to make some extensive changes, but I can do that.

I'll start with the prince's love interest. 

He's totally a boy now. :) 

I Did Something Right This Year

The Goodreads M/M Romance nominations are out, and LOOK AT ALL THE PRETTY! 

I am nominated for: 

The Good Boy is nominated for: 

Dark Space is nominated for: 

Falling Away is nominated for: 

And The Last Rebellion is nominated for: 

You guys, that's a nomination for everything I published this year. Thankyou so much for not only readying what I write, but liking it too! You guys rock! 

And here (hopefully!) is the link to vote for your favourites of all the great books nominated! 

Dark Space - now in dead tree format

What is it about a paperback that still feels more real than an ebook? 

Is is the weight? Is is the smell? Is it the way that I can now stroke Brady's face without accidentally turning the page on my Kindle? 

Whatever it is, you can now do it as well. Dark Space is out in paperback! You can pick it up here from Amazon. 

In other news, The Boy Who Belonged is now live on the Loose Id website. No cover art yet, but I'll be sharing that as soon as it's done. 

Twenty-one year-old Lane Moredock finally has a normal life. Six months after he was wrongly made a suspect in his parents’ Ponzi scheme, he’s settled down with his older boyfriend, Derek, and is working and attending school. But his happiness is threatened when his mother launches a Christmastime PR campaign to help appeal her prison sentence, and asks introverted Lane to be part of it.

Derek Fields has his hands full taking Santa photos, bird-sitting his sister’s foul-mouthed macaw, and helping Lane prepare for a television interview neither of them wants him to do. As he eases Lane through his anxiety, he worries that Lane sees him as a caretaker rather than a boyfriend, and that their age difference really does matter. He and Lane compensate for the stress in their lives by taking their D/s relationship to new levels--a relationship that Lane’s mother insists he should be ashamed of.

As Christmas draws nearer, the pressure builds. Pushy elves. Snarky subs. A bad fight. A parrot in peril. How the hell is Derek going to give Lane a perfect Christmas when the Moredock legacy threatens to pull them apart before the new year?

The Boy Who Belonged is scheduled for release on December 17. 

News...and s'mores

Okay. So time for some news!

Firstly, the awesome Heidi Belleau and I have signed a contract with Riptide for our m/m novel set in post-apocalyptic Dublin. It's called King of Dublin, and it's heavy on the violence and the non-con. Why is it that the most violent and depraved things are also the most fun to write? 

King of Dublin is about Darragh, who journeys from his home village in Cork to Dublin, and gets tangled up in the gangland wars and power struggles of the self-proclaimed King of Dublin, and with the king's pet slave, Ciaran. Hilarity ensures. No, wait, I don't mean hilarity. I mean bloodshed and trauma. 

In other news, Dark Space will be coming out in print soon from Loose Id! Yay! I'm always so happy when trees die on my behalf. 

And in other, other news, if any of you guys are on Twitter and have been following J.A. Rock and me, you might have noticed our fairly aggressive fights about spelling, bears, and confectionary. This is because in Mark Cooper Versus America, our hero Mark is constantly banging his head against the wall of cultural misunderstandings. 

Well, in the course of writing Mark Cooper Versus America, I might have thrown in a line about having to try everything once...even s'mores. And then I confessed to J.A. that I had no idea what s'mores actually were. And the more she tried to explain, the more confused I got. WHAT THE HELL IS A GRAHAM CRACKER? 

Last night I got home from work to find a parcel waiting for me. It contains: 

1. marshmallows

2. chocolate 

3. crackers 

4. a book about avoiding bear attacks 

...and handwritten (and illustrated) instructions on how to make s'mores. 

Guess what I'm doing this weekend? 

Best. Review. Ever.

I don't usually do this, but I had to share this review I got on Goodreads for Dark Space. It might even be my favourite review ever. 

Because it is awesome.

And it is also true. 

Have a great week everyone! 

Islands

So, I was rereading The Island last night, and I remembered these photos I took last time I was in Vanuatu. Okay, so The Island is set in Fiji, but I haven't been there since I was a kid. I remember being there for the coup (I don't recall which one) and waving to the army guy with the machine gun as we went to the airport. He waved back. 

But any inspiration I picked up on the beaches in Vanuatu applies to Fiji anyway. Beautiful islands, beautiful beaches, and the endless glittering blue of the Pacific. 

On his Fijian island, Lee collects sand dollars. So did I, in Vanuatu, but for much nicer reasons. My niece Meg was learning to count, so during the day we collected sand dollars and lined them up in the shower at night for her to count. 

Remember how Lee finds a green sand dollar? Here's one, next to an orange star fish: 

And these things were literally metres from our door. Get up in the morning, walk outside, and head straight into the lagoon. 

And the water around Vanuatu -- so blue. 

Here is the bungalow we stayed in for part of the trip. If you think the sand doesn't look as white and clean as it should on a tropical island, that's because this was on Tanna, and the sand here is black thanks to the volcano, Mount Yasur. At night you can drift off to sleep to the sound of the waves breaking on the shore and, in the distance, the rumbling volcano. You can visit the volcano as well, if it's safe, and walk to the top and watch the eruptions. Just magical. 

So our bungalow wasn't five star accommodation like Shaw's...

...but who needs that when you have this view from the hammock? 

You guys, if you ever get the chance to go to Vanuatu, take it! It is one of the most beautiful places on the planet.  

***

Bragging time: I got an awesome review on Joyfully Jay for Dark Space. You can read it here.  Awesome reviews make me do a happy dance! You can see that h... no, no linking to that. I've still got my pride. Also, this particular happy dance was done in my oldest, shabbiest pyjamas. 

Another winner!

Hi guys! The winner of the Dark Space giveaway at Kay Berrisford's blog is 

Kath Best. 

Thanks to everyone who commented! 

Dark Space: We have a winner...and another chance to enter!

And the winner of the copy of Dark Space over at Kari's Gregg's site is...

Judi P! 

Thanks to everyone who commented over there or on Goodreads. 

If you want another chance to win Dark Space, head over to Kay Berrisford's blog, where the competition is running until the 18th of December (give or take a few hours, since I'm so terrible at figuring out time zones!) 

And while you're travelling around the interwebs, check out this awesome review for Dark Space over at Reviews by Jessewave. That one got my happy dance going, I can tell you! 

Meanwhile, if you want to win a copy of Kay's fantastic Simon, Sex and the Solstice Stone, you've still got a few days left to leave a comment on the post below this one to be entered in the draw! 

Two more sleeps! Also, another tree has died!

There is a strange disconnect between writing and publishing. For me, at least. This means that there is a massive moment of squeee when something that has only previously been a Word document on my computer, or a badly named file called "The one with the aliens" (yes, really, I don't do titles), turns into a book. A proper, real book. A trees-died-for-its-sins book. And on that note, The Island is coming out in paperback. I don't have a release date yet, but I'll let you know as soon as I find out. 

Meanwhile: Squeeeeeee!!!!!!   

And, you guys, two more sleeps until Dark Space. Or one. Or I don't even know. What is the point of the International Date Line except to give false hope to people stuck on the wrong side of it, like me, when things are coming out? 

Although I do like speaking to you now from the future. So please imagine this in the most mysterious sage-like voice you can: I am speaking to you now from the world of tomorrow. Dark Space is out on December 4. You should buy it. 

Scared of the Dark

Don't read Dark Space if you're after a sweeping space opera. There are no space empires here, no dashing starship captains, no bad boy smugglers and no 'sploshions. Which isn't to say I don't like those things -- I love those things! First crush I ever had? This guy: 

You just won't find anything like him in Dark Space. 

In Dark Space, space is black, cold, and it will suck the air right out of your lungs. It's endless and claustrophobic at the same time. It scares the hell out of Brady. Space is where his nightmares come from. As he says: 

“Bad shit comes from space. Shit that will kill us all.” 

Brady's stuck on a space station with no way home, and he's terrified. He hates looking out the windows. He tries to keep his back to the black at all times, but it doesn't make a difference. He can still feel it, the fear creeping up his spine. Threatening to choke him with every breath. 

Brady's not a reckless hero with a cocky grin and a blaster. If he's reckless at all, it's because he thinks he's already dead, and because he thinks that humanity itself hasn't got longer than a week before the Faceless wipe them out. His recklessness doesn't manifest itself in traditional heroism, but it's still kind of heroic: Brady takes a chance on Cam. 

He only does it because he figures he's got nothing left to lose. 

He's wrong, of course. 

Dark Space is out from Loose Id on December 4. 

A Secret about Dark Space

Shh! Don't tell anyone, but I've got a secret. My boys from Dark Space, Brady and Cam? They're Aussie boys.

Not that I mention that in Dark Space. Not that Australia even exists in the near future where Dark Space is set. In fact, the only recognisable geography that I mention? Quebec. Yeah, I don't know why either. 

Brady and Cam are both from Fourteen Beta which, in my head at least, is Australia. And Brady is from a very specific part of Australia: the north-west of Queensland, in the Gulf of Carpentaria. Most of Dark Space is set on the station, but I wanted to give Brady a unique part of the world to be homesick for; something that was just his. Brady describes home here: 

We were sitting on a paddock of red dirt dotted with clumps of scrubby grass. About fifty meters away, cockatoos screamed in the line of trees that marked the riverbank. Follow that riverbank east, and around the bend you would see the stacks. You would see the smoke pouring from them and hear the bash of metal on metal as it reverberated through the town and rattled the walls of the fibro shacks.

Follow the riverbank west, and you would hit the mudflats, the mangroves, the rotted pylons of the old jetty, and the rusted croc traps half-submerged in the saltwater.

Although, I've just realised...the cockatoos probably give it away, right?

Yeah, I'm fairly sure the guy on the left is mocking me. Cockatoos give great mock. 

The Earth of Dark Space is one that has been almost destroyed by the alien race the Faceless, so-called because... well, you'll see. I didn't world-build for Dark Space so much as world-destroy. National boundaries no longer exist. Major cities are nothing but ruins. There was a massive refugee crisis, and there still kind of is. Three generations ago, Brady's hometown was a refugee camp. Now it's a town-by-default, because there was nowhere else for people to go. 

Which brings me to another Australian thing: the word reffo. 

This was an offensive term for refugees that arrived in Australia post-World War Two. You'll read it a lot in Dark Space, because, whether we like it or not, the first things that rear their ugly heads in times of crisis are our oldest prejudices. 

Dark Space is out from Loose Id on December 4.