Hey everyone, check it out!  This is for the short story I wrote in Dreamspinner Press’ upcoming sports anthology.  It’ll go on pre-sale next week, so I’ve been given permission to share the cover image and the story blurb.

Lukis Singleton’s once-popular sports column is fading fast, thanks to the terrible track record of the local football team. In an attempt to save the column, Lukis’s editor, John, decides he needs to go in a different direction. Video games are all the rage these days, so John insists that sending Lukis to a huge video-game tournament in Los Angeles will shake up his current readers and bring in new ones. Lukis isn’t thrilled about reporting on games with impossible powers or gamers who still live in Mom’s basement, but then he meets a tempting flaw in the gaming stereotypes of unwashed man-children. Aaron Sanders is a gorgeous breath of fresh air at the tournament who takes Lukis’s less-than-stellar view of gamers and turns it on its head, leaving Lukis to wonder if it might be worth being Aaron’s player two.

It was a ton of fun writing this.  There are quite a few geeky nods all throughout the story, from Marvel vs. Capcom, to Street Fighter, and even some Persona 4 Arena.  Fighting games are one of my favorite video game genres, so as soon as I saw “sports theme” I thought “fighting game tournament.”  

Lukis is the naysayer, the “games are stupid” character.  But Aaron is all “games are awesome” and breaks all of Lukis’ stereotypes since he’s attractive and social.  The main point of this story is to show that us gamers aren’t just a bunch of anti-social children who can’t function, who still live with mom, and who waste their lives with a controller in their hand.  There’s so much more to video games, especially in this day and age, and on top of the gay romance is the theme of, “Don’t make assumptions about people because of what they do.  Don’t make assumptions about something until you try it yourself.”

I’ll post a link when the pre-sales start.  Until then, enjoy this snippet  :)