Happy Pride! Top ten queer romances by POC authors

Here’s the deal. My two kids are college age, and they’re both the kind of bright, assertive young people who are gathering all over this country to demonstrate against police brutality and in support of #BlackLivesMatter. So far neither has been arrested or caught in any violence, but there have been some scary moments.

You know, I never did think to put, “Mom, I’m at a demonstration for farm workers rights and the Nazis are here and they have guns” on my short list of desired text messages.

So what do I do when the world is burning? I read romance. And how should we celebrate Pride in the year of our Lord 2020?

How about a list of novels featuring queer characters of all kinds by POC authors!

Some of these are old favorites, and some are new discoveries, and I hope you’ll find a story our two that you love, even as they draw you outside of your normal routine….

Jude Lucens – Behind these Doors

This books is AMAZING. It’s an award-winning polyamorous Edwardian romance that’s had incredible reviews and is just so, so good. Behind These Doors is grounded in both emotional truth and historical fact, where the harsh realities of the time period amplify the story’s sweetness and heart.

Buy Links for Behind These Doors

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Holly Trent – The Plot Twist series

Holley Trent has created this fantastic trilogy of polyamorous romances that explore the ways men and women love each other. Each book features different characters and different romantic pairings, and if there’s a common theme, it’s that joy can be found in unexpected ways.

• Writing Her In on Goodreads
• Three Part Harmony on Goodreads
• Working Title on Goodreads

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Atom Yang – The Red Envelope

Red Envelope is short but lovely, and it proved to me how good own-voices stories can be. Atom Yang’s eye for detail elevated the story and made it one I remember.

Buy Link for Red Envelope
(It’s in KU!)

Haven’t read this one yet but OMG the cover!!!

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Adriana Herrera – Dreamers Series

True confessions: I have three of these on my kindle but haven’t read them yet. I will, though! I’ve heard so many, many good things about them. Here’s a peak at the author’s blurb for the series:

The Dreamers series follows best friends— Nesto, Camilo, Patrice and Juan Pablo. Four Afro-Latinx men who came up together in the South Bronx, as they chase after their dreams and get unapologetic happy endings.

The Dreamer Series on Goodreads

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Courtney Milan – Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure

This book! I’m not quite as old as Bertrice and Violetta, but oh did they resonate for me. I laughed and I cried and I fell a little bit in love with their story. Courtney’s known for writing m/f romance, but she has a couple of stories with queer characters that are definitely worth checking out.

Buy links for Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure

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Cole McCade/Xen – Shatterproof

I gotta be honest. Xen/Cole McCade is an excellent wordsmith, whether he’s writing freaky dark stuff as Xen or contemporary romance as Cole. I haven’t yet dared Shatterproof, though my writing partner Irene loved it. She also really liked The Whites of their Eyes: A collection of queer horror, also by Xen. My taste runs closer to His Cocky Valet, book 1 in Cole’s Undue Arrogance series. See? There’s something for everyone!

Buy link for Shatterproof
Buy link for His Cocky Valet
They’re both in KU!

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Alyssa Cole – Once Ghosted, Twice Shy

This book intrigues me. It’s the only f/f story in Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals series, and the cover is just so very good. Alyssa’s known for her m/f contemporary romances and especially for her Loyal League series of historical romances, which, hey, I’m a history nerd, so they’re totally my thing.

Her award-winning Loyal League series – An Extraordinary Union, A Hope Divided, and An Unconditional Freedom – are set in the Civil War era South. The characters in these m/f romances are black, and they’re strong and they’re real, and they find love.

Once Ghosted, Twice Shy on Goodreads

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Talia Hibbert – Work for It

Talia Hibbert’s another author who’s better known for writing m/f romance. She has such enthusiastic fans that I was jazzed when I heard she’d written an m/m romance. But see, I do this thing where I’ll catch the buzz when a book is coming out and I’ll get all excited and preorder it and then when it finally releases I won’t want to read it because I don’t want to spoil the anticipation. Or thereabouts. Anywhoodle, I’ve had Work for It on my kindle since its release day and between that gorgeous cover and all the great reviews, I really do need to bump it to the top of the pile.

Find Work for It on Goodreads

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CL Polk – Witchmark

Witchmark is a historical fantasy, and while it’s not technically a romance- romance, there’s a queer love story in an amongst the magic. Here’s a snippet from an enthusiastic review:

“Polk has created an amazing new world with hints of Edwardian glamour, sizzling secrets, and forbidden love that crescendos to a cinematic finish. WITCHMARK is a can’t-miss debut that will enchant readers.” 
—Booklist, starred review

Find Witchmark on Goodreads

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Rebekah Weatherspoon – Treasure

Rebekah Weatherspoon writes romance and erotic romance and kink. She’s also something of a fireball on twitter (@RdotSpoon), and she organizes WOC in Romance, a website that’s dedicated to promoting books by authors of color. (You can also support WOCIR on Patreon to help them get the word out.) I’ve heard Rebekah speak at a couple of conferences, and while she’s written a number of f/f stories, for this post I wanted to highlight Treasure because her in-person enthusiasm for the book made me want to read it!

Find Treasure on Goodreads

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Bonus

Tom & Lorenzo – Legendary Children

This is not a romance (oops!). As the subtitle says, it’s an examination of the first decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the last century of queer life. Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez are two of my very favorite bloggers, and at Tom&Lorenzo.com they go about judging celebrity fashion, television, and life in general with a healthy mix of take-no-bullshit and give-credit-where-its-due. They’ve been writing about RuPaul since Drag Race started, and in Legendary Children they bring wit and insight and compassion to this serious look at queer history that manages to be both informative and very, very funny. Highly recommend!

Legendary Children on Penguin/Random House

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If you want to keep going, look for books by Avril Ashton, Riley Hart, Robin Covington, Ada Maria Soto, or Jude Sierra. You can find even more rec’s on this master list from the POC Queer Romance Authors Community

And….if you’re around and about, here’s a list of black-owned bookstores for you to support, compiled by Brain Mill Press:
Brain Lair Books, South Bend, IN
Cafe Con Libros, Brooklyn, NY
A Different Booklist, Toronto, ON
The Dock Bookshop, Fort Worth, TX
EsoWon Books, Los Angeles, CA
EyeSeeMe, University City, MO – children’s books
Frugal Bookstore, Boston, MA
Harriet’s Bookshop, Philadelphia, PA
The Lit. Bar, Bronx, NY
Loyalty Bookstore, Washington, DC
Pyramid Books, Little Rock, AK
Semicolon, Chicago, IL
Sister’s Uptown Bookstore, New York, NY
Source Booksellers, Detroit, MI – nonfiction
Uncle Bobbies Coffee & Books, Philadelphia, PA

When in doubt, read. (Or, ten+ free or $0.99 books to get you through.)

Authors are nothing if not accommodating. We see a need – in this case, the world-wide shut-down of most everything – and we strive to fill it. In the last week or so, a bunch of books have been put on sale for $0.99 or offered for free, so for today’s post, I’m sharing those goodies with you. Enjoy!!

#1 OMG KJ CHARLES HAS THE MAGPIE LORD FOR FREE!!!
If you haven’t read this book – or this series – damn, have you missed out. It’s SO good. It’s a Victorian paranormal m/m romance and if I could choose a world to live in, it would be this one. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that when I finished book 1, I immediately clicked over to book 2 and downloaded it. Thank you, Kindle.
UNIVERSAL LINK FOR THE MAGPIE LORD.

#2 Rainbow Place (Rainbow Shores #1) by Jay Northcote
Haven’t read this one, but Jay Northcote is consistently good, and I’m excited to dive into his new series. It’s set in Cornwall, one guy is out-&-proud and the other’s in the closet, and it all sounds like catnip to me. And it’s FREE!
LINK

#3 The Isolation Survival Plan Sale
There are over 50 authors in this promo! All of their books are either FREE or $0.99! Books by authors like Josh Lanyon, Nic Starr, Nyrae Dawn, CJane Elliot, Charlie Descotaux, Kelly Jensen, Karen Stivali, Eliot Grayson, and Elle Keaton!!! GET CLICKING!
LINK

#4 WIDDERSHINS IS FREE!!
This one gets an all-caps too, because Widdershins by Jordan L Hawk is the start of one of THE best Victorian paranormals in all of m/m romance. The series is done now – for those of you who won’t start something until you can glom them all the way to the end – and the way the relationship between Whyborne & Griffen evolves is truly lovely….and it all starts with Widdershins….
LINK

#5 Everything at Ninestar Press is 40% off!!
Ninestar publishes all subgenres of queer romance, all kinds of voices and pairings. Because the editor says it better than I could, I’m going to quote from the website’s blog:
LINK to NINESTAR PRESS

I want LGBTQIA+ people of color to be able to find their likenesses in characters. I want great Lit/Genre Fiction books out there to show that gay/lesbian/queer people have a voice. Trans people can be in hetero relationships, and Bi people are still bi, even if they end up with someone of the opposite gender. Ace people can have loving and fulfilling relationships without sex scenes, and characters can be gender fluid.

Here’s a link to her whole post.

Ninestar also has A Dance of Water & Air by Antonia Aquilante for FREE.
If you’re into elegant fantasy stories about royalty, check this one out!
LINK

#6 Not Dead Yet (Not Dead Yet #1) by Jenn Burke
So this is the only one that’s a little more money. Not Dead Yet is on sale for $2.99, but I gotta tell you, it’s SO MUCH FUN! Worth the extra couple bucks. It’s basically a second chance at love with a snarky ghost-ish dude and a crabby vampire and oh just read it!
LINK

#7 Supernatural LGBT Love giveaway!
This is a Prolificworks giveaway with 20-some books for FREE, including books by Morgan Brice, Jordan Castillo Price, and Victoria Sue. Most – if not all – are newsletter optional, including two of my novellas. The Clockwork Monk is a gay steampunk novella that’ll eventually be part of a larger series, and Change of Heart is a f/trans-f romance set in the world of the Hours of the Night series I write with Irene Preston. This is the first time Heart has been offered for free…
LINK

#8 Rule Breaker (Mixed Messages #1) by Lily Morton
Okay so I haven’t read this one (yet) but my friend KimLicki swears it’s fantastic. I have read Lily Morton’s The Mysterious and Amazing Blue Billings, and it was quite good, so I’m comfortable recommending this one – in case you need more than just KimLicki’s word for it! If you like snarky romcoms with heart, this one will most definitely take you away from our new (virus-infested) reality.
LINK

#9 Catalysts (Scientific Method Universe #1) by Kris Ripper
This one’s a bit of a cheat, because it’s always FREE, but OMG the SMU books are SO GOOD! Ze calls it a “universe” because for reals, there are more than 15 official books in the series along with a bunch of freebies and spin-offs (and even more if you join zir Patreon!) If you’d like to trade reality for a kinky, hot, smart series that’ll take you a while to get through, this is your book!
LINK

#10 Perilous Trust by Barbara Freethy
This one is a bit of a departure – the only book that made the list that isn’t a gay romance. It’s a m/f romantic suspense, and while that isn’t my fave genre, this one is SO GOOD. There’s lots of action, a second-chance-at-romance plotline, and a heroine who saves the day because she’s SMART. Altogether it’s more than worth the $0.99!!
LINK

HONORABLE MENTION
Amy Jo Cousins has Off Campus (Bend or Break #1) for FREE!! This is a college-aged roommates enemies to lovers story with all the heat and a healthy helping of angst, too. Highly recommend!
LINK

HONORABLE MENTION #2
I WARNED YOU. Authors just wanna help!! To that end, Looking for Trouble by Misha Horne is FREE! This is a kinky historic slow burn and about as much of a page-turner as a 400+ page book can be!
LINK
Also, Misha made a blog post with all kinds of free/low cost ways to entertain you while you’re at home. Find it here.

There’s a little of everything in this post and I’m confident something on the list will work for you! Meanwhile, I hope you’re all well and safe and staying home and washing your hands….

Happy reading…

ALSO!! If you’re an author and have a book on sale, leave a link in the comments!!

The Re-Release of Change of Heart

 

Happy January! I hope you all survived the Holiday Hoedown and are ready for a brand new year. I will confess that I’m finding some of the elements of 2017 more exciting than others.

(*stifles political rant*)

Yeah, um, so okay. One thing I’m really looking forward to is the re-release of my novella Change of Heart. I wrote it last spring for an limited-run anthology, and now I’m self-publishing it on March 1st. So yeah, I’m excited!

I’ve had the cover art tucked away since early last summer, and as much as I wanted to show it to everyone, I also wanted to do a proper cover reveal. That happened yesterday on The Novel Approach. I showed it off there, and now I can show it off here! See?

Ta da!!! Isn’t it pretty?

Since this is a re-release, there are readers out there who may already have Change of Heart on their kindles. The thing that’s different, though, is that they may also have had the chance to read Vespers, the m/m vampire story I co-wrote with Irene Preston. I wrote Change of Heart in the middle of editing Vespers, and a certain vampire basically walked right onto the page.

I’m calling Change of Heart an Hours of the Night story, even though it’s NOT a contemporary and NOT a paranormal like Vespers & Bonfire. It *is* set in 1933 New Orleans, and it tells the story of Clara, a young woman who leaves the Oklahoma dust to find love in the French Quarter. Here, check out the blurb…

Preacher always said New Orleans was a den of sin, so of course Clarabelle had to see for herself…

A body reaps what they sow, and Clarabelle’s planted the seeds of trouble. The year is 1933, and not much else is growing in the Oklahoma dirt. Clarabelle’s gone and fallen in love with her best friend, so she figures it’s time to go out and see the world.

If she’s lucky, she’ll find the kind of girl who’ll kiss her back.

Clarabelle heads for New Orleans, and that’s where she meets Vaughn. Now, Vaughn’s as pretty as can be, but she’s hiding something. When she gets jumped by a pair of hoodlums, Clarabelle comes to her rescue and accidentally discovers her secret. She has to decide whether Vaughn is really the kind of girl for her, and though Clarabelle started out a dirt-farming Okie, Vaughn teaches her just what it means to be a lady.

~*~

Change of Heart is a story about secret identities – because the vampire’s not the only one – and about finding your true self. The romantic pairing is different than the other Hours of the Night stories, because instead of m/m, Change of Heart is f/trans-f. {f = female, and if I explain much more it’ll take away some of the surprise.}

I’ve put Change of Heart on sale for $0.99 from now through the first week of the release. If you’ve read Vespers, I think it’ll be fun for you to see Thaddeus Dupont before the Church really got ahold of him. And if you haven’t? Maybe you’ll want to after you read Clara’s story. Thanks so much!!

Preorder for $0.99!

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