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My JRock (and Others) Running Playlist

Vamps with Hyde - JRock

I started running (instead of spin cycling) last November. I realized at some point that I needed a nice rockin’ playlist to run to, so I could run faster and make it up the many hills in my town. So, of course I included lots of JRock and I figured, hey, maybe someone would be interested in seeing it? It’s quite a collection, LOL. So here goes:

1. Clocks by Coldplay

2. Evanescent by Vamps (with Hyde of course!)

3. D-techno Life by UVERworld

4. My Heart Draws a Dream by L’Arc en Ciel

5. Dear My Friend by Miyavi

6.Ready Steady Go by L’Arc en Ciel (this song kicks my ass;) )

7. Aoi Hana by Color Bottle

8. Radioactive by Imagine Dragons

Anyone else out there listen to JRock while they work out? Or am I the only one?

New Yaoi, M/M Romance Book Coming Soon!

Christian from Secrets - Yaoi, MM RomanceLogan from Secrets - Yaoi, MM Romance Novel

I have finally finished my next novel and submitted it to a publisher (which shall not be named until a contract is signed;) ). I admit it’s taken me a very long time to write this one. In fact, I think it actually took 2 years! Life got in the way and well, there you go.  I think through the editing this thing to death, I’ve become a much better writer and learned a lot. The main characters, in my mind, look like the pictures. Of course, I have yet to draw them:)

The theme of this book is addiction. I don’t usually say too much about my personal life, because, well, it’s personal. However, addiction is something I’ve become all too familiar with and I think it shows in this book. Maybe that’s why it took me so long to write it? I don’t know… But it seems to me like this disease is everywhere you look nowadays. I don’t know anyone who has not been affected by it in some way. It’s such a shame to watch someone you love slowly kill themselves with drugs and/or alcohol. The pain it inflicts on relationships is far reaching and the manner in which it destroys families changes people forever. I, myself, am a member of Al Anon and have been for eight years. There are references to it in this book. I don’t know, but maybe some of the people who read it will recognize the telltale sign of the bond of the addicted and the codependent.

Above all, this book is a fantasy of what all of us afflicted with this disease wish for. Because I always write a happy ending. Even in addiction, people can get better. There is always hope.

Announcing:

Secrets

Yaoi, M/M Contemporary Romance

Blurb:

Logan only wanted one thing in his life, Christian, his childhood friend. But a stolen kiss on graduation night broke Logan’s heart and destroyed the special friendship they shared. Now four years later, Logan returns to his family in Santa Cruz, after graduating from Stanford, on the verge of a new life to find Christian on a treacherous, lonely path of booze and drugs, a victim of painful  family secrets. Only Logan’s love and acceptance can save Christian. Only Logan can unlock all the tormenting secrets. But to do so, means Logan has to face his own past and once again expose his heart to the man who broke it.

Unedited Excerpt:

As Logan walked behind Christian onto cream-colored sand, warm now with the sweatshirt, he took in the waves, crashing to shore like white ink splattered across a black canvas. Twinkling lights from restaurants and shops on the pier speckled the fog off to the distant right.

As he walked, two plaid wool blankets slung over his forearm swung in the breeze. He took in Christian from behind, his tall, slender body walking with easy strides through the sand, his black hair dancing on his head and the twelve-pack swinging from one hand. And Christian’s ass wrapped up in jeans and bordered perfectly by black leather, enough to send him over the edge. He forced his eyes to look at anything else, but Christian.

Christian halted and set the twelve-pack in the sand, only a few feet from the line where the sand turned wet from the last full tide. “Here’s a good spot.”

“Yep.” He placed a blanket in the sand and sat down on it with his legs folded in front of him.

Christian sat beside Logan, his legs sprawled out. “Want a beer?”

“Sure, why not.” His heart pounded as if a wild beast ran laps in his chest. Calm yourself. The only thing that was going to happen was a nice talk about how he didn’t mean what happened and they should just be friends. He rubbed his sweaty palms together and focused on the waves, the soothing rhythm of their rise and fall. His gaze caught Christian pulling beers out of the twelve pack. Randy and his mother were right, Christian did drink a lot. “You going to tell me what this is all about now?”

“Sure.” Christian twisted off the cap of a beer bottle, handed it to Logan and opened one for himself. “So you think I’m a dick, huh?”

Stunned, his gaze flicked to Christian’s face, studying his expression. “I said sometimes. Not all the time.”

Christian looked out to sea and took a gulp of beer. “I don’t suppose I blame you.”

He gulped a good portion of his beer down. Right about now, he needed it. “Yeah, blowing me off after that stunt you pulled on the porch the other night was a dick move for sure.” He studied Christian’s reaction.

Christian continued looking out to sea and drinking his beer for what seemed like an eternity. A silent tenseness permeated the air around him. As he finished the beer, he flung the empty bottle out into the water.

“Dude, that’s littering.” He chuckled, attempting to break the tension.

Christian whirled around to Logan, putting himself within inches of Logan’s face and body. Tears glittered in his eyes. “I’m sorry.” His lower lip trembled. He opened his mouth as if to speak again, but turned back around to open another beer.

His voice caught in his throat. He gulped hard. That was not what he expected. “Christian?” He inched up to Christian’s back and held his hand up over Christian’s shoulder, hovering for a moment before setting it down on black leather. “What’s going on here?”

“I, I don’t know.” Christian kept his back to Logan. “I h-had all these, these things I wanted to say to you. B-but now I, I can’t say them.” Tilting his head back, he chugged another beer down.

“Damn it.” Logan rose enough to grab Christian’s beer and take it from him. “Stop drinking.” As he held the half-empty bottle in his hand, Christian lunged at him, throwing the bottle from his hand and pinning him down to the blanket. The weight of Christian’s muscled body fell over his chest. Christian’s warm lips devoured his in a heated kiss.

For a moment, he lost himself in Christian’s advances, in the velvet heat of Christian’s body flush against his own, in the arousal shivering up his spine with each kiss. His brain caught up with his body. His heart was not an experiment. With a quick shove, he threw Christian off him and sat up on the blanket, panting. “What the hell are you doing?”

More Soon:)

Christie

Yaoi Manga and M/M Romance Blog Hop

Yaoi Manga and MM Romance Blog Hop Icon

Welcome to the blog hop! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a published author who loves Japanese anime, especially yaoi, JRock and M/M Romance. I’ve somehow found a niche writing what I love – stories that are a little bit yaoi and a little bit M/M romance. For the blog hop, I wanted to pull something together that might help readers of M/M romance understand yaoi, and vice versa.

For me, yaoi means androgynous, pretty male characters. Most yaoi is found in comic form such as manga and anime. The stories usually involve a much larger man, who dominates the relationship and a much smaller man. Although, like everything else, not all are like this. There is a difference in the relationships in true yaoi that I don’t think we see in M/M romance so much, a difference that I believe stems from the difference in Japanese versus Western culture.  That is, there is a clear distinction between the “top”, also called seme, and the “bottom’, called uke. The seme is usually older as well as larger, more experienced more aggressive sexually, etc, than the uke. In this way, there are some very clear roles played by the characters. I think some would say that the uke can tends to be more like a female in a male body. Also, yaoi does involve sex that’s not consensual. In the Western publishing world, this is taboo. The thing I love about yaoi, is the stories and characters really seem to be made for female fantasy. It seems to me that in yaoi stories, there’s not the strict constraints on making sure the guys act like guys all the time and it doesn’t have to be super-believable. It’s about telling a good story and letting the reader get lost in it.

As for M/M romance, this comes from a Western world where I think we do tend to try and make our stories seem as realistic as possible. The male characters look more like real men, gruff, bearded, hairy chested, you get my meaning. Not that some of that isn’t hot:) What’s a bit more freeing in writing M/M romance is probably that there is not this strict seme/uke character constraint – maybe the bigger man’s the catcher, you never know. Maybe the smaller man is more aggressive sexually. What’s great is it spans the whole spectrum.

Yaoi MM Gay Art - Necalli
Necalli from "The First Full Moon" - Portrait of Necalli

So what I try to do is to write a combination of the two. I try to blend the pretty, androgynous characters of yaoi with Western world situations. Although I try my best to blend realistic gay situations with female fantasy, I attempt to make my characters break out of the “men are like this” mold. I hope that makes sense. And yes, I do get a lot of my story ideas and characters from watching anime. For instance, the character, Necalli, in the First Full Moon came from Vincent Law of Ergo Proxy. I wanted the yin and yang in him – to be powerful and brutal and also sensitive and incredibly tortured by his animal nature. For this reason, I made him a smaller man. Everything about him had opposing sides, just like Vincent Law.

My vampire books started out with a Hellsing flare. My character, Sebastian, really got his start being more like Alucard than anything else. Then I tried to drive deeper into him and his past and well, sometimes your characters dictate who they want to be, LOL.

Anyhow, thanks for stopping by!

Christie Gordon

To Enter to Win the Grand Prize:

  • Leave a comment on participating blogs with your email so I can contact you. (One comment is counted per blog post. Let’s not spam anyone.)
  • On websites without a comment section you have the option to participate in the “scavenger hunt” for one entry per site.

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