Pre-publication Ramble!
On
the 11th of July I will officially become part of the Evernight
Publishing Family when my short story ‘A Secret Love’, is released. ‘A Secret
Love’ was accepted to their Romance On The Go line in May and now, less than a
fortnight before my release day, the excitement is really starting to build.
A
new release is always exciting. I love the anticipation of seeing the cover and
the pleasure of reading through the author copy of the manuscript. I even love
the building nerves and panic; the fear of what readers will think and what
their reviews will be like. Every emotion combines to make for a brilliant
feeling and that feeling is addictive. I don’t understand how any author could
just write one book and call that their career. I’d hate not to be able to
experience this feeling again and again!
All
that being said, my nerves are much greater with this release than they ever
have been before, I think for the simple reason that this is the first short
story I have had published in a long time.
‘A
Secret Love’ is an eleven thousand word steamy M/M erotic romance. I had
thought about expanding the story when I first started writing, but now,
despite my nerves, I’m glad I didn’t. I like it just the way it is.
The
idea for ‘A Secret Love’ didn’t come to me as one bright, perfect spark of
inspiration, but I think the idea had been hanging around for a long time. I
began to mess about with it one evening, an hour or two before I had to make
dinner, and once I started writing, I didn’t stop until I had hashed out the
whole story. The words and characters and locations came easily to me. Although
I ultimately saved the file away without much thought about what it could
become, I was happy. My boyfriend, however, was not, when he returned home to find
a pile of raw beef and unpeeled potatoes where he expected a Cottage Pie to be.
It
was a few weeks before I came back to the story. I read it through again with
fresh eyes and found I really liked it. It was good. For a first draft, anyway.
‘A
Secret Love’ is, ultimately, a story about a loving couple who have been forced
to keep their relationship a secret. They can only meet up occasionally, and
when they do they take great care not to get caught for fear of the
repercussions, but when they get together in a highland hotel for my story, the
end is in sight. They plan to run away to be together. They just need to
maintain their secrecy for another six months.
That
idea of a hidden love really appealed to me, but with only six months left to
wait for their happy ending, I wanted to know how my characters would feel. How
they would react. I think anyone who has ever been in love understands the
often-unreasonable, unfathomable depths of pain that can come with being
separated from your partner, even for the shortest amount of time. I tried to
imagine how it would feel if that pain was constant; if it was, in effect, a defining
feature of your relationship. If absence is what you know, how beautiful, but
bittersweet are those times when you can get together? And how could you
possibly contain your excitement when you knew things were about to change for
the better?
What
pleased me, when I reread my first draft, was that my central characters were
so strong and resolute. There isn’t as much angst in the story as you might
expect. Mark and James are emotional, but they are stoic, and I liked that
quality in them. Fate had dealt their hand and they had resolved to play it as
best they could. They were seeing the game through to the end. I really loved
that attitude and it made the story such good fun to write. All I can do now is
hope that when ‘A Secret Love’ is released, readers will have as much fun with
it as I did.
The
waiting game continues!
Author Bio
Douglas
Black was born and raised in bonnie Scotland. He started writing erotica as a
means of paying the bills when he was a student at university, but after
graduation he found he no longer had the time to write. Over the summer of
2012, Black picked up a pen once more. After a brief, successful flirtation
with self-publishing, Black’s novella ‘Business or Pleasure’ was picked up and
released in April 2013. It quickly made the publisher’s best-sellers list.
Douglas Black’s short story, ‘A Secret Love’, will be published on July 11th
by Evernight Publishing.
Author Links
Congrats on the new book, hope you have a great release day :D
ReplyDeleteDouglas, this sounds a must read for sure :-)
ReplyDeleteCongrats, Douglas! Welcome to Evernight:)
ReplyDeleteThanks Raven for having me over here to play, and thanks so much for all your kind comments!
ReplyDeleteThanks Raven for having me over here to play, and thanks so much for all your kind comments!
ReplyDelete