Avian30

Actual picture of our actual office, mid-edits. You should be afraid.

Right now, J. Alex Cook is trying to figure out what family means to him. There’s a kid named Nate who’s about to have what he hopes isn’t the most awkward coming out party Nashville’s ever seen.  Michael has the (not so) bright idea to propose to his boyfriend on a stage at a theater in the Virginia woods. And a tech geek on a business trip in Budapest just saw his boss shoot a guy in the head.

Erin and I write a lot of stories at once, and we put a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves to get everything done fast, so we can do the next thing, so you can read the next story, and so that we can keep up with the ever-accelerating pace of Romancelandia.

Sometimes, it makes me long for the genres and careers of friends who publish a book one year and promote it the next year.  Right now we’re staring down two blog tours (Midsummer and Phoenix) with more to come soon.  If I list it all, I’ll go a little bit crazy.

The reality is, despite this rapid fire year, the publication schedule is going to slow down soon.  Sort of.

Phoenix will come out June 10, but you almost certainly won’t be seeing the next Love in Los Angeles book until 2016.  There’s a bigger time jump there, between books 3 and 4 (which we’re in revisions on now), and it’s a natural place for a little bit of air, but we wanted you to know. It’s also a point that we’re really going to want to sit down and talk about the series; it has been and continues to be so personal to us, but it’s after book three that we can really begin to talk about why and what we’re up to with it.  We’ll also be sure to keep providing you with LiLA story tidbits while you wait in our mailing list, which you can sign up for at right.

After Midsummer, which is out on May 20, you’ll get its sequel Twlefth Night late this summer.  We’re working on the third book there now also, and that may edge in in 2015, but we’re not sure yet.

You’ll also get Off-Kilter, a PG-rated short story about Scottish Country Dance, this summer. And, we hope, that story about the kid in Nashville, which is due for submission this week. Probably a few other shorts too.

We have an anthology project happening we’ll tell you more about in the fall, and Racheline’s long-mentioned big announcement really is coming soon.

Meanwhile, we’ve put something new on the calendar, somewhere between now and Secret House, our HEA triad story about age differences, generational trauma and being the children of immigrants.

The new thing is a spy duology — one book is M/M, and one is M/F.  If you saw me on Twitter talking about our sex-worker heroine (it’s her job, it doesn’t drive her plot, she doesn’t give up her job to have an HEA), that is related to this.

We have no idea why it didn’t occur to us to write about spies (or sex workers) sooner. After all, I’ve seen every James Bond movie and travels all over the world; Erin works in international affairs.  And spy stories are, at core about logistics (Erin), farce (me), and over- and underestimating people in the right combinations.

None of any of this would be possible without our army of first readers who check for accuracy on things like queer culture in Rome (LiLA 4), how to encrypt data in pornography (Spies), and whether to call that thing in set dancing a reel or a hay (Off-Kilter).

One of the reasons we write about polyamory as much as we do (it’s not in all our stories, but it is salient in Love in Los Angeles and Room 1024 — and if you want monogamous narratives we recommend our other work instead), is because we think it’s applicable to a lot more than love or sex.

It’s applicable to work. To hobbies. And to which book we’re writing this week. Life is often all about managing New Relationship Energy even when that’s not with a person, but with a project. You can worry you’re falling out of love with the thing that isn’t new, or you can see the energy you’re pouring into the new shiny thing reflected back in all the other stuff you love too, and become deeply invested all over again.

So that’s the story we’re telling right now.  Not just in all the stories that we’re writing currently and need to be writing right now (but, as we’re trying to convince ourselves, not Right Now), but by writing at all.  Somehow, this post doesn’t even include all the projects in the hopper.  But they’re waiting for us, and we will get there.

Thank you always for being patient and enthusiastic and delightful and curious and critical and engaged with our stuff.