meredith_shayne

Two things are quite important in Whitewater: food, and Coogee Beach.

If you bought the paperback of the anthology, you will know already that there's a glossary in it, that explains some Aussie terms, and on my part, provides some information on the Australian-specific food mentioned in Whitewater. I am quite keen for people to be able to picture the food that Luke makes accurately, and to that end I'll reproduce here the explanations and recipe links that are in the glossary in the paperback version.

Biscuit – cookie.

Flat white – coffee, with milk. No froth or other embellishments (cocoa powder, cinnamon, etc).

Sausage roll – minced meat (typically beef and pork, but sometimes chicken), herbs and onion wrapped in puff pastry. An example of a recipe is here.

Scone – a small bread-like cake. Can be sweet or savoury. Wikipedia entry for scones.

Tomato sauce – the Australian equivalent of ketchup.

Vanilla slice – a firm vanilla custard between puff pastry sheets, typically decorated with either a simple water and icing sugar-based icing or a dusting of icing sugar. An example of a recipe is here.

 

Now I would really, really like a sausage roll. NOM.

Also, in Australian, thongs = flip flops. :)

 

Now we get to Coogee beach. In a spectacular case of good timing, I happened to be going back to Sydney at a time when I had just finished the first draft of Whitewater, so I decided to visit all the locations featured in the book and take some photos, which turned out to be incredibly useful, particularly when it came to Wylie's Baths.

I posted an album of some of the photos I took that day on Facebook, which is here if anyone wants to take a look at it. It just so happened to be one of those beautiful Sydney spring days that Luke thinks about on the day that he and Cam go to Wylie's Baths for the first time. What it wasn't, though, was a good surfing day. Cam and Luke wouldn't have gotten much out of a surf that day. :)

My next book is almost here! It's called Whitewater, it's a novella, and it's being released as a stand-alone ebook and in print as part of the Under the Southern Cross anthology, which is an anthology of five stories set in Australia written by Australian authors - myself, LJ LaBarthe, Isabelle Rowan, RJ Astruc and Robyn Walker.

More about the anthology as a whole in a minute. First I just want to share the absolutely beautiful cover art, done by the amazing Anne Cain, and the blurb for Whitewater.

( Whitewater cover art and blurb, plus the links for the whole anthology )

If you like the sound of that, the link for preordering is here. The book will be available on March 13th, so not too long to go now.

The cover art for the anthology as a whole, and the other individual ebooks, is just as stunning as that for Whitewater. Anne is truly a genius. The whole lot is available for preorder at the following links:

Under the Southern Cross paperback

The Body on the Beach by LJ LaBarthe

Coming Home by Robyn Walker

Jasper and the Dead by RJ Astruc

The Red Heart by Isabelle Rowan

So, it's January the 28th in most parts of the world now, which means that Metal Heart is now officially for sale! You can find it at the Dreamspinner store in ebook or paperback formats, at All Romance ebooks and Amazon, although for some reason it's currently only in paperback there. I'm sure it'll be available at the Kindle store very soon.

I have a couple of promotional things planned for the book, including participating in a massive rock star-related blog hop in February which I will tell you about very soon.

As befits a book release day where I also have the day off (thank you, Auckland anniversary day), I have spent the day making a soundtrack for Metal Heart; since I always rabbit on about how music is instrumental to my writing process, I decided to finally pony up a playlist for you, which is fitting for a book about musos.

Not every song I listened to during writing is on there, but there's enough there for you to get a flavour of it:

Here it is if you'd like to take a listen.

I even uploaded some obscure Aussie rock for you, so prepare to be baffled by that! :)

I also made ice cream today but since I can't pass any of that through the Internet, you'll have to content yourself with some music instead.

 

Well, Christmas is over for another year, and we are staring down the barrell of 2013. 2013! How on earth did that happen?

I got various things for Christmas, the most exciting of which is my cover art for Metal Heart. Done by the wonderful Anne Cain, it's all I could have wanted in a cover for my Aussie rocker boys.

( Metal Heart cover )

Beautiful, no?

Various places where you can find my books are having sales at the moment:

JMS Books are having 30% off ebooks all weekend (Reasonable Force).

At Torquere Press you can get 15% off your order all weekend with the code memday2012 (Rust Red: Galvanized)

Dreamspinner are entering the final week of their 5th birthday celebration, and that means that you can get my DSP books for 20% off until May 31st (Equilibrium paperback and ebook, and Tinsel and Dust)

Happy shopping!

Tomorrow Jessewave's huge m/m book giveaway happens, and you might recall that I am giving away one ebook copy each of the following:

Equilibrium

Tinsel and Dust

Rust Red: Galvanized

The instructions for what to do over at Jessewave's if you want to participate have gone up, and here is the link to those. I intend to still be asleep when the post goes up (YAY for being on holidays now), so best of luck with snagging the books of your choice.

Tinsel & Dust is now on sale at Dreamspinner! You can get it here. I hope those of you who do buy it enjoy another glimpse into how Michael and Ryan are doing.

I'll be giving away one copy each of Tinsel & Dust, Equilibrium and Rust Red: Galvanized at Reviews by Jessewave's huge Christmas book giveaway, which I believe will start on December 22nd, so look out for that post to go up over there for a chance to win those and many other fabulous books. At some stage soon (when I can stop doing something other than counting down the days until I finish work for this year) I will probably run a little Tinsel & Dust giveaway here too.

In lieu of all that for now, here's another excerpt from the book:

***

( Jack thinks that if we stay in a motel for Christmas, Santa won’t be able to find us )

Music is very important to my writing process. I only write without music if I absolutely have to, which thankfully isn't often. The music I listen to while writing has an impact on the mood of the story: a dark story has to have a soundtrack full of dark music, while a more lighthearted story can have a more lighthearted soundtrack. Each of my published stories has a soundtrack, either a mix of songs from different artists, or a single artist; for Equilibrium it was a mix of songs, for Reasonable Force it was Velvet Acid Christ, for Eyes Wide Shut and Rust Red: Galvanized it was Midnight Oil. For Tinsel and Dust, my upcoming Equilibrium sequel, it was the John Butler Trio. Music actually plays a larger role in Tinsel and Dust than it ever has before, in that the music of the John Butler Trio actually features in a scene.

Now, I'm not going to give away what that scene actually is, because that would be telling. :) But what I will tell you is what songs I was thinking of when I wrote it. To me, they fit Michael and Ryan's situation to a tee.

Both of these songs are off the album Sunrise Over Sea. The first is called Peaches and Cream:

For so long I've sung this sad ol' song,
And it feels like my time is up.
For she came and landed in my arms,
And she filled my half empty cup.
Yes she filled my half empty cup.

There you are right in front of me, 
A brand new day sunrise over sea.
No longer my cup half empty cause there you are...



and the second is called Seeing Angels:

Why do I deserve such a visit
From the one I thought I'd never meet.
Beyond my greatest expectations.
You exceeded everything. 
Well here I am 

Take me for what you see
For I'm transparent in the light of you. 
And look inside,
See that fire burning bright
The same one you rekindled inside me 

My mouth was dry
only you quenched my thirst
I thought I was last
You told me I was first. 




So there you have it, two great songs for my boys. Tinsel and Dust should be released mid-December, I have a tentative release date of December 14th for it. That's not set in stone at the moment, but if I learn any different I'll be sure to let you all know.

 

I am back in New Zealand after my sojourn in the US, via a week in Hawaii for a conference. Hawaii was hot, it had excellent pineapple and outstanding bacon, and I spent a lot of money there. I'm delighted to be back home, mostly because of getting to sleep in my own bed and having more options for clothing than what fitted into my suitcase 7 weeks ago.

I bought some incredibly snazzy Doc Martens while I was away, I am ecstatic about those. But I didn't really start this post to talk about all of my new swag. I started this post to talk about the weather. Sort of.

When I got home on Friday morning and did my laundry, all of my clothes had dried on the clothesline by that afternoon. Today, there was not a cloud in the sky, and I was quite unpleasantly warm and sweaty (oh, sorry, "glowing") by the time I'd finished pulling up 7 weeks worth of weeds from my backyard. This is the time of year when I start avoiding going out into the sun for too long in the middle of the day, lest the pale, delicate flower that I am gets burned to a crisp in the ozone layer-depleted Southern Hemisphere sunshine.

All that means that summer's coming. And in this hemisphere, that means that Christmas is coming too. About six weeks ago I mentioned that in December I will have a short story coming out from Dreamspinner entitled "Tinsel and Dust"; it's a coda to Equilibrium, which picks up a couple of weeks after the novel ends and describes Michael and Ryan's first Christmas together in Burreela. I don't have a blurb for it yet, but now that we're six weeks closer to release what I do have is an edited version, so I'm going to share a little bit of it with you now. I hope you enjoy it.

***

Michael first became aware of the warmth of Ryan at his back. He sighed, snuggling back into Ryan's body and settling back down. But after a moment he realized that something felt wrong, or odd, not right; he rubbed at his eyes and blinked awake, to be confronted by huge blue eyes in a pale face just inches from his own in the before-dawn grayness of the room. He gasped and jerked back violently, elbowing Ryan hard in the ribs. Ryan grunted and curled in on himself, pulling away, but all Michael could do was put a hand on his chest so his hammering heart wouldn't pound right out of it.

"Fu—udge, Jack, what are you doing?" he whispered fiercely. He looked at the clock. "It's five in the morning!" They'd only been asleep for a few hours.

Jack smiled at him, not seeming to notice his mood. "Santa's been!" he said, and ran out of the room.

Michael stared after him, then slammed his head back on the pillow. "Unbelievable."

"Ow," Ryan said from behind him, his voice muffled by the pillow. "Rudest awakening ever."

"Sorry," Michael said over his shoulder. "He scared the shit out of me."

"What did he want?"

"Didn't you hear? Santa's been!"

Ryan groaned. "Christ almighty." He rolled onto his stomach, shoving his face further into the pillow. "Santa wants to go back to sleep. There aren't enough Tim Tams in the world to make up for this."

Michael reached back and patted Ryan on the backside. "Don't get too comfortable, Saint Nick. If I have to get up, so do you. That's the deal."

Ryan groaned again and put the pillow over his head.

***

I've got some posts up at The Romance Studio talking about Equilibrium, and anyone who comments to one of those posts will go into a draw to win a copy of the book. The posts are here and here, and I hope to see you there!