Once again, I present my humble offering to anyone seeking a cozy sci-fi read:
Weaving In The Ends, a novella duology that starts with a summer fling & ends with a comedic Winter Solstice brawl.
It's a feel-good chosen family story, and it's a quick read that can be read as a standalone, or as an easy springboard into the world of 2 connected novels.
Available in print & ebook now, audio coming soon!
Wintereyes has reasons to like the guy, besides him liking a woman as shy and strange as she is. He has a cat, and then this (hot off the press, as it were):
The siamese mewed and pawed the air, looking at the dropped photo.
"You can show me were his secret pictures are?" I asked.
The cat zipped off, tail an S shape in the air.
"Wait!" Caramello said as I swiftly followed the beast. Past the grotto bath. Past the metal door that might have once been a large closet but was now a darkroom. Past an inset library barely big enough for the square desk and an easy chair, considering the spiral stair. A clear dome and mirrors directed orangy sunset sun down the stack. Three stories of hardback volumes and a few silvery grimoires made me pause, but Flash meowed. I pushed open an oaken door as Caramello reached for my shoulder, but not touching, giving one last dispirited, "Wait!"
His bedroom...
The guy has his qualities. Cats and books are a good sign? Right?
#WordWeavers 2405.06 — Who is your most fun character?
Wintereyes.
She's a free spirit unlike any of my previous characters, but she's always kind. Despite being shy, she's incredibly courageous but doesn't understand how impressive that is. Having lived amongst wolves (she's human), she doesn't understand what it means to live amongst people, but is learning. She's sticking to her "friendly" principles when challenged with unerring innocence, integrity, and passion. It does make her more-than-occasionally NSFW, however...
May the artwork take you to a place of magical romance and deep, calming joy, bringing a smile of gladness to your face and heart every time you see it.
New author alert! Snowy Wings Publishing is pleased to announce that we will be publishing REBEL WING, the first book in a young adult sci-fi romance saga by Tracy Banghart, in September 2024.
I'm curious - if you are a Romance Genre fan and you bought a book labeled Romance - would you feel cheated if the protagonist Love interests did NOT end up together at the end of the story ?
I'm not generally a Romance book reader. I enjoy them occasionally, and think they are generally great !
I assumed that part of the author /reader contract for Romances is that a successful Love relationship at the end - is the expectation.
May the Fourth is also my latest book's birthday 🎉
Domesticated Magic is a romantic fantasy towards the cosy end of the spectrum, with The Feels, and a grumpy-sunshine-type m/m pairing.
Mateo and his family fled when their people turned to sorcery. Mateo’s own magic is tame but it’s still banned in their new home...yet they use it every day. But the sorcery seems to have followed them. They already lost their world once. Mateo can’t let them lose again.
The male lead is feeding chicken soup he made to the female MC who seems faint. He is trying to get her to rest. She likes his concern. He blows on the Asian-style spoon and she lets him feed her twice like a toddler, before taking his wrist.
I thought I wrote that she guides the spoon to her mouth.
What I actually unconsciously wrote was that she guided the spoon to his mouth
This is from a romance novel. Suddenly the electricity between the perspective couple is doubled, especially when it manages to get him to blush slightly.
#PennedPossibilities 302 — What is the one thing your SC desires most in the world?
Caramello, aka Caramel-eyes, né [unpronounceable polysyllabic tropical islander name], is the last son of the Chieftain. He is the last in the succession. He's been "exiled" to the Endless Island (the mainland) to avoid his siblings after his father is murdered. What he desires most is to be forgotten. No scratch that. What he desires the most is that his mother, the Chieftain's second wife, survive what he fears is going on right now...
#WordWeavers 2405.01 — Introduce your setting as if it’s a character in your story.
[/Well, I decided to jump ahead in the WiP and write what might be the start of the next chapter. The title may be named:You Have Mail. Pardon the Dickensian texture; this is a first draft. —RS/]
I never expected a human habitation to feel as protective as my dorm room did. Sure, my lodgepole tent protected me through the blizzardy winters in the Fell Wood, as it did the wolf pack that had adopted me. I provided the tent, though. I repaired it, stored it, and raised it year after year. I maintained the cooking fire for all the wolves and cubs. It was I who was being protective, not it—or so it felt.
My dorm room wanted me to know that for the next few years, at least, it existed solely to protect /me,/ to comfort /me./ Increasingly, it did so as I added memories. Mother Wolf and I used one of the two small beds, the left one, piled with fuzzy brown blankets as needed or clothed with luxurious white cotton sheets that felt cool against cheek or jowl. Since I was tasked with the cleaning instead of the dorm servants, my room smelled of us, faintly of yeast, sweat, and a wolf that occasionally hunted rabbits but favored the cafeteria's pasture-beast stew.
The little red iron stove kept us warm through winter; the room's wood panel walls kept us shaded from the hot summer sun. It lovingly provided a rare enclosure—almost like walking within the orange and white rock walls of the slot canyons of the south woods—creating a remarkable silence in a land of noisy humans and huffing machines. This and its soft radiant cloud-light ceiling made me feel... what? Swaddled? Like being /home,/ as my parents would have used the word back on the farm when I was a child. My spirit books, fashion magazines, and papers cluttered the worn ink-stained blond pine desk. I ran my bare feet over the oval tapestry rug letting the patterns of wands and dryad trees caress my toes. My skin stuck to the cushy tan leather chair as I stood, but I knew that was it hugging me.
Situated to the rear of the building on the first floor, the casement window at the end of the rectangular space opened to the clay roof of a shed. Crisp autumn breezes fluttered the gauzy drapes as I looked out at the barrier forest beyond the stables, lit by the setting sun. The window conveniently allowed Mother Wolf to jump up, as she did right now, and clatter into the room as she pleased. She greeted me with an ever-wet red tongue on my face and backside. (A white wolf opening the front door of the women's dorm, with a key in her mouth, and walking in always frightened at least one student or professor. People called me their Wild Woman, but still never got used to the implications of the name.)
Best of all, as the special guest of Her Highness, nobody dared inspect my room. Everyone knocked, no exceptions. Wolf inside, right? Framed pictures of my boyfriend hung suspended by single powder blue silk ribbons, and they were /very/ inappropriate. Looking at him warmed me deeply, reminding me of being /us,/ together—so I didn't care that my foolish "civilized" human brethren might think. People existed to enjoy themselves, regardless of what nosy people might say. This room supported me as I lived here, trapped in the Townships because circumstance required me to learn to be "more human" as Her Highness was fond of saying. My little supportive enclave encouraged me to be me, and allowed me to dress or not dress as I pleased behind its closed oaken door.
When the House Mother knocked, I simply threw on a dressing gown. I turned the pictures around before answering—to be respectful. It tickled me that she never asked why I always smiled when I opened the door.
From: For Love of a Konbini Idol
I Faced Her Onryo Lover
They have a ways to go before they get to the real thing.
Join Ume, Shiomi, and Tomo as their relationship develops. In a creepy world where “love” never dies.
Quote: I looked at the cigarette in my hand, thought, “What the hell?” and took a puff; “Ugh, unflavored.” But I’d finally gotten a kiss from my konbini girl, a secondary kiss, but a kiss.
From: For Love of a Konbini Idol
I Faced Her Onryo Lover
Everyone is angry
“Don’t swear at me!” The situation was wearing on my nerves, or I might have let it pass, but the swearing grated. It clashed with the image of Shiomi I kept trying to build in my mind. I was tired, my cigarette tasted foul, and I had just risked my life for the third time. And for what, an ungrateful woman who didn’t have the sense to see her lover was a rotting corpse!
“I’ll swear if I want to, White Knight-sama. I’d be with my girlfriend right now, instead of wandering around these desolate hills, if it wasn’t for you. You’re as bad as Mika, riding in on your fucking white horse and fucking my life up! I hate you! Damn it, I hate you!”
“The Idea of You”: Deconstructing the Modern Romance Through a Cinematic Lens (articleshubspot.com)
Premiering on Amazon Prime Video, "The Idea of You" offers a captivating exploration of contemporary relationships and societal expectations.