Good morning, everyone! Today is the big day! I’m going to post the short story first since that’s all ready to go :) My book should be ready for purchase later, there seems to be some kinks with the publisher’s website at the moment for the new releases.
So the gay romance story for Dreamspinner Press is “Press START to Play,” also known as, “That one story I forgot to let my mom read.” It’s eBook only, but it looks like there are several different electronic formats for it. Keep in mind that this story is NOT WORKSAFE BY ANY MEANS as it involves geekery, gaming, and sexy times between men.
There are two ways to read the story:
1. Buy the individual story itself for $3. That’s right, only $3 to get all of the wonderful video game references and romance that you want.
2. Buy the entire anthology to read over 1500 pages from other talented authors. It is the “Make a Play” sports anthology (yes I wrote about video games for a sports anthology guys)
Since this is release day I thought I would give you something more than that. How about a snippet from the story? And remember, don’t just buy the story, read it, enjoy it, tell me what you think, and tell others about it. Blog about it, review it, spread it around so that it’s EVERYWHERE!
Take care, everyone, and I’ll post in a couple of hours about the book :)
***
Lukis takes the controller, watching as the game loads and the animated sequence begins. The graphics are impressive—he guesses. The art style is interesting and themusic is catchy. He’s surprised when he realizes he recognizes some of the characters—various superheroes from the huge movie releases over the summer. There’s Spider-Man, who seems to have recovered from losing his uncle and fighting the giant lizard. Then there’s the Avengers, a team of attractive superheroes run by an angry black guy in an eye patch. “They in a fightin’ game?”
“Yep. It’s a combination of heroes and video-game characters. Figured you’d at least know who some of these guys are. Everyone does.”
Lukis frowns. “Where’s Batman?”
“Batman’s not in this. He’s DC, this is Marvel.”
“But Batman is cool. You said heroes, he should be here.”
Aaron laughs. “I ain’t sayin’ he ain’t cool, I’m just lettin’ ya know that he ain’t in this game. Marvel and DC are two different comic book companies. You know, it’d be like if our home football team and the rival team were in a game.”
“They are. It’s called Madden.”
***
It’s easy to tell how much fun I had with this, huh?
And just a message in advance, thank you everyone for your support. I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it. And as I said, don’t just buy it, read it, enjoy it, chat with me about it, tell your friends, talk about it with your friends, I want this story to get big. Review it, blog about it, tell me places to go where I should have people review it, draw fanart for it, just anything you can think of. As fun as it was to write it, I do actually have an important message in it that means a lot to me: stop assuming that geeks are just a waste of space. Just because we like video games, or anime, or whatever it is that we’re into doesn’t mean that we’re these losers with no lives. Also, and this is a big one, BLACK GEEKS EXIST! Stop being surprised about it. I made my characters black on purpose. I made the geeky gamer black because for some reason, I swear, people are still surprised when we play something other than like football or basketball or warshooter warfare shooter shooting.
So yeah, enjoy this piece by me :) $3 worth of entertainment, I promise you ^^
All right guys. Today is the day, as Aqualad says in Young Justice. This is the short story, the book will be posted later once the link starts working :) Until then, enjoy this thing I wrote about a gaming skeptic falling for a gaming geek. And remember: Batman is cool, he’s just not Marvel. And please, please tell other people about this, encourage them to read it too, and most definitely encourage them to talk to me about it (and you guys, talk to me about the story too! Tell me what you think ^^) $3 gets you an entertaining story where I snuck all sorts of geeky nods into a wide publication, from the snippet, to Street Fighter, even Persona 4 Arena makes it in. I went all out and I had a blast, so I want you all to enjoy it, too :)
