Sunday Snippet, 3.19.23

Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!

The terrible impact rang out across the field like a thunderbolt cleaving a tree in twain.

Wren’s hands flew to his mouth. The crowd leapt and cheered, surging in a bloodthirsty tide. The young man amidst the milkmaids let out a particularly gruesome guffaw. Wren didn’t dare breathe. It seemed the world had ceased turning the instant the blow fell.

The sword had struck Shrike in the side. The Holly King’s blade came away crimson. And the horrible noise, the crunch of metal against boiled leather and bone—

But Shrike rolled.

At first it seemed as though the force of the blow had thrown him aside, but as Wren watched him tumble, he realized Shrike had purposefully dodged. Not entirely, not quite fast enough for that, but dodged all the same, and when his feet came under him again he staggered upright.

And Wren’s hopes rose with him.

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Sunday Snippet, 1.8.23

Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!

“Nell reminded me,” Shrike added as Wren gazed at the mask. “I need something to disguise my oddities from mortal eyes.”

“They’re not oddities,” Wren said without even considering the matter, the words spilling forth from his heart rather than his head.

If Shrike minded, it showed neither in his face nor his speech. “I need your help to finish it.”

“How?” Wren blurted. He’d felt desperate to alleviate Shrike’s agonies since they’d begun and equally hopeless he might ever do so in his own mortal failings.

Shrike reached out his forefinger and tapped the centre of the mask’s brow, where a smooth field devoid of veins spanned between the two antler valleys. “It requires a cunning sigil.”

Wren’s unease increased. Even after all the hours they’d spent in each other’s company, hours in which Wren thought it woefully apparent his own mortal skill couldn’t hold a candle to Shrike’s fae mastery, Shrike thought him some manner of wizard. “What ought it to look like?”

“I know not,” said Shrike. “I’ve no gift for glamour. I’m ill-accustomed to seeming anything other than what I am.”

Wren had spent more than three decades disguising his truest self from society’s judgment. Shrike could not have chosen a more experienced practitioner in the art of deceit.

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Sunday Snippet, 9.25.22

Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance collection, Tales from Blackthorn Briar, a sequel to Oak King Holly King featuring hurt/comfort and many happily-ever-afters – available wherever fine books are found!

A gentleman stood at the bottom of the stair.

Not, Ephraim realised with a sinking heart, Lofthouse or Felix. The gentleman stood far too tall to pass for either—more in line with Tolhurst or Butcher. As he turned his face upward to meet Ephraim’s stare, he revealed a face which couldn’t have seen many days beyond thirty years. And a handsome face, at that. One that bore a sun-kissed brow, dark yet twinkling eyes, a long nose with a noble arch, a jaw strong enough to attract notice even beneath the close-trimmed black beard, and full lips beneath the moustache that wore a smile like sunshine breaking through storm-clouds.

Ephraim’s pulse gave an uncomfortable flutter, as it sometimes did when he arose too quickly from his desk.

“Good morrow, sir!” said the gentleman in a hearty tone. Ephraim couldn’t quite place his accent—a very slight one, with a touch of a burr and a hint of a lilt which defied all efforts to pin it down. The deep bass of his voice thrummed through Ephraim’s own ribs in a manner which made his knees feel weak for reasons beyond rheumatism.

Ephraim put these feelings away into a little locked drawer in his mind, as he always did, and cleared his throat.

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Tales from Blackthorn Briar – OUT NOW!

Tales from Blackthorn Briar comes out today – which means you can celebrate Mabon with Shrike and Wren!

Shrike, the fae Butcher of Blackthorn, and Wren Lofthouse, a mortal Victorian clerk, are bound together by love and fate. Their continued adventures (and those of their friends) are told in this collection of fantastical tales following the story of Oak King Holly King, including…

Mabon
• Wherein Shrike and Wren repay their debt to the Court of Hidden Folk.

Mr Grigsby’s Clerk
• Wherein Mr Grigsby finds a replacement for Wren – and perhaps more than he bargained for.

Jack in the Green
• Wherein a certain Horse Guard wanders into Blackthorn Briar.

Winter Solstice
• Wherein the Holly King surrenders to the Oak King.

The Holly King’s Peril
• Wherein Wren and Shrike discover danger in the wilds of the Fae Realms.

The Ballad of Daniel Durst
• Wherein Daniel embarks on his authentic life in a bold new land.

Discover it now wherever fine books are found!

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Sunday Snippet, 8.14.22

Sunday Snippet from my gay Victorian fae romance, Oak King Holly King – available now wherever fine books are found!

The sheer strength of Shrike’s frame proved itself through his strapping shoulders and sinewy arms. To Wren, he appeared all the more breath-taking when he bent over work so fine and delicate as plying the merest sliver of a blade to the thin sheet of pale white hart’s hide and slicing the leather into lace. Rough yet gentle hands, whose touch could make Wren tremble, now split a slender piece of wire in twain—a boar bristle, Shrike explained when he caught Wren’s curious gaze—and wound with catgut for needle and thread to piece together a patchwork harlequin who would’ve been the envy of all in Venice’s Carnivale. Wren felt his pencil scribblings hardly did justice to the man he knew and loved. Still, as the house passed in comfortable silence, he filled his sketch-book’s pages with his attempts to capture the knife’s-edge balance between brutish brawn and elfin grace.

Oak King Holly King is a gay Victorian fae romance, available now wherever fine books are found!

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Oak King Holly King – Deleted Scene

[This is the original version of the scene of the morning after Wren and Shrike perform the Samhain ritual. While steamy and fun, it felt redundant to have two love scenes back-to-back. You can read the rewritten scene in Oak King Holly King—available on Amazon • Apple Books • Barnes & Noble • Bookshop.org • Kobo • Overdrive • Smashwords—and enjoy the original below.]

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