Worldbuilding 101: OOPS!

Writing

Some time a zillion years ago, I started a project for this blog on worldbuilding. What I didn’t know at the time was I was about to fall on my face. The day I made the first worldbuilding posr was the first day of several awful months that ended up with me in the hospital.

I never forgot the idea, but I have very little time for stuff, other than mindless gaming. That doesn’t take much effort. đŸ˜č

Anyway, I found a solution. I don’t have to do a blog series on worldbuilding, because someone has already done something better!

https://www.worldanvil.com/author/kittenwylde

I’ve barely begun to play around with this shiny new toy, but I love it already. And tonight I’m going to start “moving in” for real. Can’t wait to get home and get busy!

PROMO: Infernal Hope

Promo

Infernal Hope - Sionnach Wintergreen

Sionnach Wintergreen has a new MM paranormal historical fantasy romance out, Love Songs for Lost Worlds book 3: Infernal Hope. And there’s a giveaway!

Ex-necromancer Frank Hope risked his life to help his demon lover Kasimir return to his homeland, a dimension humans call Hell and Kasimir calls the Eternal Realm—a beautiful medievalesque land. Now, because Kasimir is the heir apparent to a vast, wealthy kingdom, the two live in luxury in a palace by the sea. But darkness haunts them.

Necromancers, humans sworn to capture and slay demons for Earth’s energy corporations to use as fuel, continue to strike the Eternal Realm. Strife between the Eternals’ kingdoms grows as well.

When war breaks out with a neighboring land, Frank and Kasimir are forced to make hard choices that threaten their relationship—and even their lives. Is their love truly meant to be? Will the universe that once smiled upon them turn against them?

This is the final book in the Love Songs for Lost Worlds trilogy and combines elements of fantasy, paranormal, and gay romance within the framework of an alternate 1980s world.

Warnings: Violence, gay bashing, suicidal ideation, foul language, explicit sex, light bondage, vomiting, suicide attempt and sexual assault

About the Series:

Kasimir, a demon boy, secretly watched a human boy, Frank through an interdimensional window. While Kasimir struggled with an abusive father, Frank grieved his father’s death. Little Kasimir watched…and fell I’m love.

Years later, Frank, who always felt like a loser, discovers he has a special power—commanding demons. That’s a valuable skill to corporations like DemonCo who slay and process demons to be used as fuel. When fate brings Kasimir and Frank together, they meet as enemies, but Kasimir believes they are destined to be lovers.

With themes of redemption, courage, and true love, this paranormal fantasy series is set in an alternate 1980’s Texas and the mystical Eternal Realm.

Get It At Amazon

Book One | Book Two


Giveaway

Sionnach is giving away a $15 Amazon gift card with this tour:

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Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47184/?


Excerpt

Palace of the Kingdom of the Onyx Moon

Kasimir

 I hold Frank in the dark. He still has dreams of his former life, nightmares. He doesn’t usually wake up, he just fights things in his sleep, moving jerkily and making unintelligible noises. I put my arms around him and snuggle him against my chest. After a few minutes, he relaxes.

I relax, as well. I hate whatever things lurk in his past that disturb him so. We are living a beautiful life with each other. He seems happy—ecstatic even. But when he sleeps, he’s still pursued by whatever things haunt him.

Things haunt us here, but he is unaware of them.

He doesn’t know the Vanishings have increased, or that we stopped going to the village because the animosity toward him there had begun to worry me. When someone calls him a Necromancer, he corrects them happily—‘ex-Necromancer.’ He doesn’t realize that doesn’t matter to nearly everyone here. To my mother, Rahvel, Bedon, Varalica, and me, he’s a hero. To everyone else, he’s still a villain. And I know that would break his heart.

I’ve instructed Bedon and Varalica not to discuss the Vanishings in front of Frank. He’s blissfully unaware of how dangerous it is to live beyond the palace’s shields.

The only things he fears are in his dreams, and I will have it that way for as long as possible.

So I hold my beloved, and press my lips to his head, his face, and tell him ‘I’m here,’ in hopes my words create a lifeline to the pleasures he loves so much in our world.

I can’t fully partake in those pleasures myself. I love Frank dearly, but I can’t relax here like he does when he’s awake.

I’m free of my betrothal and want to frolic with Frank for as long as I can. I live in fear of the next time my father wants to forge alliances with my hand. Although I’m allowed a measure of say in such things, I still fear confrontations with my father. Frank has my heart, will always have my heart, but I worry how long our freedom will last.

However much I love being here with Frank, I never wanted this. When I Vanished from the Eternal Realm, when Frank summoned me, I was terrified. Once I learned I would not be processed for fiendium but would be his familiar, instead, I was actually happy. Not only was I with the man I had fallen in love with when we were children, I no longer had to worry about being king. I didn’t have to deal with my father’s constant mocking. All I had to do was love Frank.

Now, it’s all back on my shoulders—all of the responsibility, all of the abuse, and the prospect of being married off to someone else. Sometimes, I almost wish he hadn’t saved me. I wish he had gone to Eden and let me die.

I can’t tell him any of that. He’s haunted by enough without my adding worries. For now, there’s only us and our love.

#

Next day – The King’s Beach

Frank

I flop down on our blanket. “I don’t know if I’ll ever come again,” I tell Kasimir. “I’m all out.”

Kasimir turns over, his dazzling eyes alight with mischief. “Twenty minutes from now you’ll be all over me again.”

“Yeah, well…okay. But right now, I feel completely drained.”

“So do I. I wish it were lunchtime already. I’m famished!” He lifts up on one elbow. “You seemed to quite enjoy that sparkling wine yesterday. Would you like me to ask Bedon to get some more of that for us?”

Before I can answer, a man flies from the cliff above us and lands neatly next to us. He’s wearing the colors of the king, black and emerald green. Livery, I think I’ve heard Kasimir call it. I think he’s a messenger. His skin is darker than Kasimir’s, almost bronze, and his bat wings are nearly black. Like all of the eligos, he’s striking and handsome. And again, I feel like the luckiest guy alive, because Kasimir, surrounded by men who all look like underwear models, has chosen me.

It seems so weird now to think I was ever a Necromancer. That I ever worked for DemonCo and thought about killing Eternals to make fiendium. The human world runs on fiendium, on the lives of the eligos and all of the other inhabitants of this world. It’s just a world, like ours, but we somehow decided it was ours to pillage and justified our greed by saying they were demons, evil incarnate, when they’re actually just people and animals from another world.

I catch my snap, then. I haven’t actually been listening to what Mr. Bronze has been saying, but Kasimir stands up, raining sand, with an alarmed expression on his beautiful face. “I see,” says Kasimir. “I need to change clothes….”

“Wear your armor. They leave in an hour.” He turns toward the cliff and raises his wings as if to fly. “Oh,” he faces Kasimir again. “He said to bring your pet monster.” With that he flaps his wings and flies back toward the cliff.

Awww. Kasimir’s asshole father’s term of endearment for me. Great. What now? “What was that all about?”

“We need to fly back to the palace,” says Kasimir. His wings shoot out behind him. They look like giant hawk’s wings, feathered instead of webbed like most other eligos and copper striped with gold. They’re breathtaking. It doesn’t matter how fucking awesome they are, however, I still hate flying. I endure it, but it still makes me feel faint. I hate heights, which kind of sucks when the love of your life has wings.

“What’s going on?”

He spreads his arms so I can hug him while he carries me. “Father is confronting an army from the Kingdom of the Red Moon. He wants us to ride with him.”


Author Bio

I’m Sionnach (prounced SHUHN ukh) and I’m a trans male author of romance and fantasy. Most of my books are gay romances because they’re so much fun to write. Opposites attract is my favorite trope with hurt/comfort right behind it. Few things are as fun to me as bringing men to life and pushing them into each other’s arms. I love happily ever afters and believe true love is absolutely real.

Before I started writing full time, I volunteered as a grant writer for animal rescue nonprofits. I love animals, and they inevitably find their way into my stories. I share my life with my husband and seven spoiled cats. I’m also the emotional support human to a crazy husky. He/him

Website: https://www.SionnachWintergreen.com

Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010515095870

Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/everwintergreen

Twitter: https://twitter.com/everwintergreen

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sionnachwintergreen/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15258737.Sionnach_Wintergreen

QueeRomance Ink: https://www.queeromanceink.com/mbm-book-author/sionnach-wintergreen/

Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sionnach-Wintergreen/e/B01FOU8PS4

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PROMO: Pierced Peony

Promo

Pierced Peony - Dahlia Donovan

Dahlia Donovan has a new queer cozy mystery out (ace, biromantic, lesbian), Motts Cold Case Mystery Book 2: Pierced Peony. And there’s a giveaway!

On a casual walk along the Cornish Coast, Pineapple “Motts” Mottley stumbles upon a body and a perilous new murder case in the second novel in the Motts Cold Case Mystery series.

As spring rolls into summer, Motts settles into her cottage. She’s enjoying a daily stroll when a body in the sea destroys her peace and quiet. It brings yet another mystery for her to solve.

How does a woman who vanished from Polperro three years prior wind up battered by waves?

Motts is drawn into the investigation despite her best attempts. She finds a family in turmoil and loads of suspects. With no easy answers, she tumbles further into chaos and ever closer to danger.

Can Motts find the killer before she’s the one put on ice?

Will she survive a bone-chilling brush with death?

Publisher | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon CAN | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | QueeRomance Ink | Universal Buy Link | Goodreads


Giveaway

Dahlia is giving away a $10 Amazon gift card with this tour:

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Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47183/?


Excerpt

Pierced Peony meme - Dahlia Donovan

A cat, a turtle, and a stranger face off in the garden. The stranger blinks first. Right. The joke still needs some work.

“Do you always let your turtle and cat out in the garden together?”

“They’re friends. They like to gossip.” Motts set her trowel to one side and got to her feet. She dusted the grass and dirt off her knees. “They both need fresh air and sun in moderation. Are you lost?”

The man didn’t seem lost despite having popped up beside the back fence around her garden. He looked like a police officer. Though not quite as broad-shouldered, he stood as tall as Teo Herceg, the detective inspector she’d met in April and had been dating for over a month.

“I’m hoping to speak with Pineapple Mottley.” He sounded like a policeman. His suit, while nice, appeared rumpled from driving; his short grey hair, however, was gelled and styled perfectly. “I’m Detective Inspector Dempsey Byrne with the Metropolitan Police’s cold case unit.”

“Cold case?” Motts’s heart stuttered in her chest. She rubbed her fingers together nervously. “Jenny. You’re here about Jenny.”

Jenny Cleverly had been her lone best friend through her early childhood. Motts had stumbled across Jenny’s lifeless body on her way home from primary school while walking through a park, hidden behind a hedge. She still had nightmares about finding her.

The unsolved crime had haunted Motts. She’d developed an obsessive curiosity about cold cases as a result. And at least once a year, she searched online to see if anyone had been arrested for Jenny’s murder.

“Ms Mottley?”

“Motts.” She had a sudden sense of dĂ©jĂ  vu; she’d had a similar conversation with Teo in April. He’d been investigating the murder of a Rhona Walters, who’d been buried in the garden behind her cottage. It had been an auspicious start to her life in Polperro. “Cactus.”

Her beloved Sphynx cat had leapt onto the fence and then over to the detective’s shoulder. Detective Inspector Byrne didn’t bat an eyelid. He simply reached up to pat Cactus on his head.

Well, he certainly approves of the random strange man intruding on our afternoon.

Intruding inspector intrudes introspectively.

Introspectively?

Not my best alliteration.

“I don’t often see a flowerless garden.” He glanced slowly around at her rows of fruits and herbs. “None at all?”

“My allergies try to drown me if I’m around them for too long.” Motts kept flowers far away from her cottage. Real ones, in any case. She made and sold origami and quilled floral arrangements as part of her small business, Hollyhock Folded Blooms. “Why don’t you come in for tea? Cold case curiosities can converse comfortably.”

Don’t frighten the fancy London detective with your peculiarities.

The judgmental voice in her head sounded suspiciously like her mum, who meant well but couldn’t always relate to Motts’s more unique traits. She didn’t understand her wayward autistic and asexual daughter. Motts had given up trying to fit into neurotypical moulds.

I am who I am.

Alliterations and all.

Oh, fun accidental alliterations are the best.

“I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Motts stared blankly at the man, unable to decide if he was being polite or not. “You drove from London. At least a five-hour drive on a good day. Tea isn’t imposing. Sleeping in my garden and trampling the herbs would be.”


Author Bio

Dahlia Donovan

Dahlia Donovan wrote her first romance series after a crazy dream about shifters and damsels in distress. She prefers irreverent humour and unconventional characters. An autistic and occasional hermit, her life wouldn’t be complete without her husband and her massive collection of books and video games.

Author Website: http://dahliadonovan.com/

Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/dahliadonovan

Author Twitter: https://twitter.com/DahliaDonovan

Author Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dahliadonovanauthor/

Author Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8184061.Dahlia_Donovan

Author QueeRomance Ink: https://www.queeromanceink.com/mbm-book-author/dahlia-donovan/

Author Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dahlia-Donovan/e/B00KFNZFHU/

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