New (re)Releases!

August 23, 2019August 23, 2019 / Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

My recent release Ties That Bind is once again available at major retailers!

For Chel, Tomlin, and Mathias, life is simple but good. They share a home and a love, and despite a few conflicts of personality, are happy. Mathias runs a magic shop, where he makes magic items and potions for his customers, and Tom is his familiar, helping supply his magic. Chel, who’s not magical, works at a bookshop and makes sure dinner is on the table for his lovers.

When Mathias suddenly comes down with a mysterious illness, Chel and Tomlin seek out answers. As Mathias’s familiar, Tomlin can sense that nothing is wrong with the magical parts of him, but when a trip to the doctor’s indicates nothing is wrong with him physically either, they start to worry.

Then Mathias collapses, and the search to find the truth becomes urgent.

In more spectacular news, Sharing a Pond is now on Kindle Unlimited!

This title is much older than Ties That Bind, so I put it through a bit of revision before re-posting it. The book is pretty much exactly the one that was released before (so no need to re-buy it!) but I cleaned up a lot of clunky language, fixed some of the issues that were pointed out (that didn’t require a complete rewrite), and tweaked a few things that in retrospect didn’t work. Some of them are minor changes that create a very different feel for a scene.

(If you previously bought a copy and would like to see/read this new version, drop me an email with a screenshot of the current book and I’ll send a digital copy of the new book.)

The print will be coming shortly. There’s a lot more formatting to fiddle with, and I want to see what it looks like in hard print before I release it to the world.

Brent shows up on Corey and Shane’s doorstep in the dead of winter needing a place to stay—and hopeful his mates will provide it, and not mind he’s a frog shifter.

Being a shifter is nothing new to Corey and Shane, but neither is being mates. They’ve been together since before they first met Brent ten years ago—back when Brent was Brenda. While bringing a third into their relationship is more than a little complicated, they’re willing to try.

But change is always easier said than done, and Brent wonders if he ever really stood a chance at being happy with the men he has always loved and admired.

Review: Hitorijime My Hero (anime)

August 19, 2019August 19, 2019 / Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

I started this 12-episode show while pet-sitting for my parents and just finished it last night (before leaving to pet-sit for someone else). It’s based on a Japanese yaoi manga series, but this will just be looking at the anime. Because of the lack of sexual content, I’d place this more as a “boy’s love” story or just plain ol’ romance.

Overall this was a sweet/cute story following four guys (two couples) along with their friends. It was an interesting watch, but it didn’t entice me into “just one more episode” until the last four. Part of this is because while the couples aren’t already established as we start, there is a certain sense of “finding” a relationship that was already there, which removed a lot of the emotional build-up between the characters. (Also the first episode confused me as one character’s hair color changes with a time skip and I mistook him as someone else.)

I will warn that the one couple includes a guy who is in first year HS (roughly 16, I believe) who ends up with a teacher (his friend’s older brother). I’m guessing the age gap is 10 years, which in itself is reasonable but at that age can be problematic for viewers. However, the anime does a good job of handling the age gap problems (as well as addressing student-teacher issues*) and their relationship is sweet rather than sexual, as far as we see.

I hope this show is an indication that more yaoi is moving away from the horrific tropes that make up this genre–while it does include many of the traditional motifs of earlier yaoi, it avoids making the relationships entirely physical; there’s no on-screen sex, if they are having sex at all; and while seme/uke visual tropes might be invoked, there is a stronger sense of actually having consent…which yaoi often ignores. There are a few scenes which are callbacks to the time before consent, but overall it’s much improved from…well, pretty much anything from the ’90s and early 2000s.

If you’re a fan of the genre in general, this is worth a watch as long as you don’t go in expecting the reluctant uke and the domineering(/rapey) seme. The dramas are cute, although very low-key; the final arc hit my emotional notes especially, although your mileage may very. There’s a sprinkling of humor mixed in, the dub was well done, and the art for the most part was enjoyable.

While it didn’t blow me away, I can definitely see myself watching this when I want a sweet relaxing show to play in the background.

* The show brings up the student-teacher issue and has it as a dramatic point, although I’m not sure it really resolves it satisfactorily – unless the last few scenes imply something I missed.

Announcing Re-releases

August 2, 2019August 2, 2019 / Alex Whitehall / Leave a comment

With the closing of Less Than Three Press, I had to decide what to do with the titles I’d had with them.

For one, it was easy. Ties That Bind released in April, and it didn’t take much thinking to want to get that out again as soon as possible. It should require minimal editing and work, and I spent some time today loading it on Amazon and on Smashwords – I’m not to the point where I can make accounts with ALL the individual vendors – so hopefully by Monday it will be back for people to buy it! (Links will be updated then.)

Sharing a Pond was a harder decision. It came out four years ago, and I’m not the same author I was then. But I LOVE that cover and I love that book, so I didn’t want it lost to the Couldn’t-Be-Bothereds. The decision was made.

I’m reading through Sharing a Pond and fixing it up a bit. Now, this isn’t a complete overhaul – all the major plot points and dramas still unfold (unless I get farther in and realize Past Me was a fool) – but I am smoothing out the language a lot, and cleaning up issues I realized in retrospect (or were kindly pointed out to me). Mostly minor actions/language that made certain characters seem a bit more like jerks than I’d intended. The story is the same, I’m just adjusting a few things with four years of knowledge under my belt.

The re-release of this title will depend on how edits go and how the publishing process goes in general (I’m going to make sure it’s available in print as well as digital).

In some ways this process is very eye-opening. The edits I’m making, while not major, are rather extensive. It really shows how I’ve improved as an author* in the past few years, and I think I’ll be prouder of having this new (nearly identical) version on shelves.

It also makes me wonder in four more years, how I’ll feel looking back at the writing I’m doing today.

* I will admit that Sharing a Pond was written while I was still recovering from a brain injury, so some of the language issues could be related to that – none of it was nonsense, but my mastery of English was no what it could have been.