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Latest Updates from Lia’s WIP Corner

Latest Updates from Lia’s WIP Corner

Long Time No Blog-y

Indy's_whipOh, man guys, have I been terrible about blogging or what? Life is so crazy and I feel like I never have enough writing related news to warrant a whole post here. But I also feel it’s important to reassure you that I’m not dead and that I am writing.

First, the thing that’s been keeping me up at night: my sister and I are opening a tea room/lunch cafe! It’s so crazy and we’ve been so busy–I’ve found 2 new grey hairs! It’s exciting though. We’re leasing a little kiosk with a beautiful atrium in a restored historic building in Downtown Olympia. We’re not quite ready to open, we had some set backs with the health department requiring us to update pretty much every single piece of equipment in the kiosk and we still need to submit out Food Business application but we’re in the homestretch it feels like. In December, we’re going to be selling English Tea and gifts for the holidays since we can’t actually serve food yet. It’s very exciting! We’re going to make up some gift mugs and such as soon as the christmas crackers I ordered come in.

I can’t say how thankful I am to have all you lovely readers reading my books, buying/borrowing my novels, and supporting me! My sister and I have long dreamed of opening a tea shop or cafe and it never would have happened without my books finding an audience with you all.

If you follow me on twitter you’ve probably seen some of my baked goods as I’m in the process of testing all our recipes for the shop.

Book News

But enough about the tea room, let’s talk about books. The Source and the Wire by Lia CooperIn case you missed it, I released a contemporary (with a dash of magical realism and soulbonding) novella at the end of september called The Source and the Wire. This novella was one of the first things I began writing while I lived in Pullman, very shortly after deciding I wanted to write for a living and is still one of the stories very dear to my heart–it even has a happy ending! So be sure and check that story out if you haven’t.

Blood & Bone Book 3: The Symbiotic Law

I’m roughly 3/4 finished writing the final book in the Blood & Bone Trilogy and lmty, it’s a doozy. This book is wildly different from both previous novels, charting an adventure literally around the world, and I’m so excited to share it with you all. I know this trilogy has been a rocky emotional ride, full of lots of frustration, so I hope book 3 will be just the welcome relief you’ve all been patiently waiting for. My current goal is to publish book 3 before Christmas. I’ll be giving away a free copy as we get closer to launch for people subscribed to my mailing list:

Sign Up To Lia’s Mailing List For A Chance To Win BLOOD & BONE 3!

Forthcoming Projects Winter 2014-Early 2015

  • Secret Christmas romance (Title/Cover reveal Dec 1!) between a small town coffee shop owner and a new in town novelist trying to connect with his dead father
  • Substitutions for Lemons, a f/f novel involving a down-on-her luck baker and a French mail-order-bride
  • The Kingdom of Pacchia Book 2: Courted by the Alpha, political tensions run high as the disfavored Lord Riven begins a tentative courtship of the Crown Prince Aubrey, set against a back-drop of betrayal and strained loyalties.

New Release: The Source and the Wire

New Release: The Source and the Wire

GUYS! I’m super psyched to finally say that The Source and the Wire is finally done and available on Amazon.

The Source and the Wire by Lia CooperThis book is very dear to me in that it marked the first thing I wrote way back when I made the decision to switch majors from Criminal Justice to Creative Writing. It’s the first full novella I wrote and FINISHED, which let me tell you, took some serious effort.

I began writing The Source and the Wire during my first winter in Pullman back in 2010 in the SUB. I hadn’t written anything more than a couple 500 word flashfics in roughly 5 years but I had this idea and I sat down at the ass crack of dawn in the empty Student Union Building and I just started writing. I made myself write that first 5000 words in a couple of days and spent the next several months taking the bus to the only coffee shop in town (because there were 3 feet of snow on the ground) and drinking an americano with extra shots, and writing 700 words. That was my daily goal. And I did it.

But then the draft languished and was forgotten as I moved onto other projects–namely The Duality Paradigm which was my first FULL LENGTH novel. But here it is. Extensively revised for public consumption and with a new ending, which I think all of you HEA lovers will enjoy 🙂

Blurb

Sometimes you meet a person and it’s the wrong moment, the wrong city, the wrong life…Sometimes it takes years for both of you to be ready to fall in love…

Simon Cowen’s life is as neatly tailored as his bespoke suits, everything and everyone in a particular place. Just because a person works on the shadier side of legality, doesn’t mean they have to be uncivilized. It’s this control that has made Simon good at his job.

His parents were soulmates, but Simon decided a long time ago that he had no desire to ever be so weak to another person. Weakness didn’t fit into his neatly framed life. He certainly had no interest in falling in love with the sloppy, flirtatious Luc Allard. Or at least, that’s what he told himself.

When an accident on a con job causes Simon to bond to Luc, he must relearn what it means to put his life in someone else’s hands.

More soulbonding, more exotic locations, and more about two men learning how to be in love.

This story contains explicit M/M content.

Buy it on Amazon!

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Lia’s WIP Corner: A First Look At “The Convergence Theory”

Lia’s WIP Corner: A First Look At “The Convergence Theory”

If you follow this blog you might have noticed my (many) posts about The Duality Paradigm, a book I published at the beginning of February (my debut novel!!). Duality is the first book in the BLOOD & BONE Trilogy, which is my focus this week in Lia’s WIP corner.

Wolf_Canis_lupus_laying_in_grassThe Blood & Bone Trilogy takes place in a not-too-dissimilar Seattle where magic and the supernatural rub elbows with the mundane. The protagonists, Detectives Ethan Ellison and Patrick Clanahan, could not be anymore opposite. One is a magician, one is a werewolf—one is an unapologetic slut, the other is waiting to find his soulmate. But a human murder in disputed werewolf territory means that the two have to work together to find the killer before the story leaks to the general population and all manner of hell breaks loose. It isn’t long before sparks fly between the two and nothing in their lives will ever be simple again.

You can read the first chapter of The Duality Paradigm here on my blog.

First Look: Blood & Bone Book Two

The second book in the BLOOD & BONE Trilogy—The Convergence Theory—follows Ethan and Patrick as they try to deal with the emotional fallout from Duality while investigating a series of break-ins, grave desecrations, and murders. The full chapter will be posted to this blog on April 1st so check back for that. In the meantime, I’m going to give you a sneak peak:

A wizard is a self-contained unit. These pagans will try to fill your head full of balance and nature and threads. They’ll try to tie you down with their tree hugging morality. Don’t let them. Your magic is here, between your eyes, and in the strength in your hands and under your tongue. It is inside you, not in anyone else.

~ Alexandre Pelletier to his son Ethan, age 5

#

Branches snapped, bones crunched and then were ground underfoot. Blood, which is a very precise science, sprayed out like water from a garden hose. And it was difficult to tell, as the mud churned beneath their feet, where one furry body turned into another. Where he should grip and aim and kill. He was terrified to get it wrong.

Panic: a helium filled balloon that rose up in his throat and choked him.

Yelps, barks, and snarls rang out but he was frozen in indecision.

Power surged through him and fizzled when he cut it off, held it back. He screamed in his own head at his own indecision, but he didn’t act.

He didn’t act.

And the wolf’s back broke.

But that’s not how it happened.

##

For people who have read The Duality Paradigm, you know that I promised the sequel by Fall 2014. This is a very conservative release estimate. My hope is actually to have it ready for publication this summer with a mid-summer release of the third book. I know I left you with a cruel cliff hanger so I’m working hard to get the rest of the series written. If you have any questions about Duality, please feel free to ask them (here on my blog, through goodreads or amazon) or email me.

Lia’s Upcoming Book Projects

My novella The Source & The Wire is temporarily on hold while I focus on the Blood & Bone Trilogy but I’ll be getting back to that story hopefully by the end of the summer.

Burne-Jones-le-VampireI also have a series of connected novellas I’m going to be working on this fall. The collection is tentatively titled A Date With The Night and will feature 3 stories about complex relationships between humans and the supernatural, D/s kink, and seduction. The first story will follow a series of one night stands between Henrik—a vampire hunter—and Isabella the vampire queen as they struggle against their mutual attraction and their instincts to take one another out.

2014’s Publishing Schedule–More Details To Come!

  • Blood & Bone Book Two – June 1st

  • Blood & Bone Book Three – August 1st

  • The Source & The Wire – September 1st

  • A Date With The Night #1 – October 10th

  • A Date With The Night #2 – October 30th

  • A Date With The Night #3 – November 15th

  • ADWTN Omnibus – Early December

Quick Reminder

My short story Ava, Sublime is FREE on kindle today and tomorrow! So, if you’re looking for something short, tense and hot to read over the weekend, check it out 😉

Lia’s WIP Corner

Lia’s WIP Corner

Indy's_whip by Edward LundGosh, the title for this blog sounds kinky. I kind of like it though. Let’s start with the word “WIP”; it’s a term bandied about fanfic circles but maybe you’ve never heard it before. WIP stands for work-in-progress, and in this recurring feature of the blog here at The Speculative Romantic, I’ll be taking the opportunity to talk a little bit about what I am working on at the moment.

I have several works in progress right now. I’m waiting for a beta reader to get back to me on The Duality Paradigm so I can start on the third draft. Writing on the sequel The Convergence Theory is temporarily on hold while I a) wait to hear back from beta on the first book, b) work on other projects and c) while I figure out what happens next. In other words, I’m suffering some real Convergence writer’s block that I’m treating by backburnering.

Thieves Who Are Bad At Feelings

Toronto by paul bicaI’m also editing a soulbonding heist novel called The Source and the Wire—of which the draft was written back in 2011 but I’ve only just gotten around to editing. I’m roughly 50% through the first round of edits though there are already a dozen places I’ve marked for rewrites.

The bulk of the story takes place in Portland and Toronto, which makes this the second major story I’ve written with scenes in Toronto and a Quebecois character. I think a writer’s vacation to Toronto will be in my future as soon as I can afford it.

I’m tentatively scheduling Source&Wire for a February publication on kindle and nook. The story is very intense and relationship-heavy for me. It tells the story of how Simon accidentally soulbonds to longtime colleague and one-time lover Luc Allard on a fraud job gone tits-up. Simon, unwilling to reveal his own dependence on Luc, tries to seduce the other man under the pretext of “letting off steam,” unaware of Luc’s own feelings for him. I’ve always thought of Source&Wire as a story about two people like trains that keep missing each other in the night. I’ll post an excerpt next month after I’ve finished editing it.

Writing Outside Lia’s Comfort Zone: Exploring Narrative Through Short Stories

On a different track, about three weeks ago a friend from Evergreen approached me to write a short story for a collection she’s putting together. The theme for this short story collection will be the exploration of relationship narratives that are not commonly portrayed in media: eg queer, trans, intersex, ace, poly, functional and non-functional. I wrote the first draft of a short story (tentatively titled Ava, sublime.) for that collection and sent it off to my beta. Ava is a very narrow exploration of a polyamorous relationship between two men and an aromantic woman, with very minor D/s elements. I have the feeling that it will need quite a bit of revising before I’m done with it but for the most part I’m quite pleased with how it shaped up and initial reaction from my alpha reader was positive. Here’s a short excerpt, feel free to drop a quick word and let me know what you think!

On Sundays she stayed late to get the bulk of the week’s roasting finished up, so during the week she could leave early. It was a Tuesday, unremarkable but for the fact that Patrick was out to dinner with some friends from college, leaving Ava and Brenden alone for the evening.

Brenden cooked, which was not out of the ordinary, something with meat balls made up ahead of time and defrosted, and a fancy sauce that involved white wine and fresh garlic and linguine—also fresh though Ava wouldn’t swear that he had made it himself.

There’s a baguette next to you.”

Hey, look at that, you’re right.” Ava grabbed the slender loaf of bread wrapped up in brown butcher paper, purchased from the french patisserie across the street from Brenden’s work.

Slice it.”

Got a knife?”

In the block, to your left. You know that.”

Forgot,” she said.

Brenden flicked one end of a hand towel at her bum.

Hey!” Ava pointed one stern finger in his face and scowled, “None of that for me, sir.” He grinned back at her, all shiny white teeth and crisp dress shirt, tucked into expensive slacks. He even had his dress shoes on still. It felt a little like being scolded by her prep school principal.

And that’s the highlights—tune back in next week where I talk about writing Dialogue!