Last Call (and a snippet)

It's May thirty-first, which means in ten days I go on vacation. That means anyone who needs something from me has until the fifth to email or otherwise contact me about it. I will attempt to deal with all of them up until the ninth, after which point everyone waits until I'm back in action on the twentieth.

I am not very good at whittling down my writing to dos, for every one story I complete I seem to add three more. I've been briefly sidetracked working on a side story for The High King's Golden Tongue. It's about Lesto, who is significantly more prominent in the rewrite than he was in the original.

After that, it's back to my to do list and sticking firmly to it because I really want to finish certain stories and am tired o getting waylaid.

The first story I'll be finished, which right now is just shy of being half done, is The Painted Crown, book two (of three) of the trilogy that The Engineered Throne decided to become, since I couldn't do Bertin's story until I took care of something else first. TPC is about Prince Istari, former general, ex-sniper, and current hostage of Tallideth :3 I don't think I've posted any of this yet? But if I'm wrong yell at me. First 3000 words, apologies for any errors, it's still very much a WIP.

I hope everyone has a lovely week ^__^

WARNING: VACATION

This is official notice to all and sundry that I am going on vacation in June. With Samantha and Sasha. The update will be done the week we're gone, but that's it (and pretty much all of that is Sasha). I am closing my email, ignoring the internet, the only thing I may take my laptop for at all is to write.

I will be busy doing last minute shit like packing and all from June 5th on, and that is the last day you have to get in touch with me. On June 9th I officially go dark, and you will not hear from me again until June 20th. No exceptions, exchanges, or refunds. LT3 has worked basically nonstop without anything but working vacations since we started, and we need a break. So we're taking one.

We'll be spending a week (the 10th-17th) in Las Vegas :D Samantha's been before, but Sasha and I have not, and we're all really looking forward to it. We've got a spa visit scheduled, a day long trip to the Grand Canyon, a reservation at a Gordon Ramsey restaurant, and a whole list of other things to see and do.

I've got a lot to do in the meantime so that I don't come back to huge piles of work (I still will, but ideally I'll minimize the number of piles). So you will probably see less of me online the next few weeks and then not at all, and I'll return once we're home and have decompressed (which is why you won't hear from me until the 20th).

So this is your warning: if you need me, speak sooner rather than later. Because I'm dead serious about not checking emails and such while I'm relaxing and having fun.

Everybody have a good week.

Release Day - The Harem Master

I have a penchant for pretty boys in jewelry and very little else. It's cropped up in basically any story where I could possibly get away with it. I love poly, and above all else I like taking something that frustrates me and writing it in a way that doesn't frustrate me.

Regarding all of Tavamara verse, I was provoked by two things: Slave fic is a squick for me, and I got really tired of stories where a man was dragged into a king's harem, which was all women, in a country where homosexuality was wrong, and no one ever seemed to take issue (or The Bad Guy takes issue and once he's been taken care of everything goes back to being fine). It's sloppy world building.

So I wanted to create a world where sexual servants were an important part of the culture, but they weren't slaves. I wanted a society, too, where homosexuality wasn't an issue.

In fact, I wound up with a culture where bisexuality is common (and even expected to a degree, for good and bad, since no culture is perfect), where the greatest taboo is having children out of marriage (and therefore men and women do not sleep with each other before marriage) and so the culture developed a practice of same sex lovers while unattached.  Only the royal family are allowed to retain lovers after marriage, a sign of their status and power.

But also, and most importantly, an indication of their right and worthiness to rule, since concubines willingly and happily surrender their lives to serve and will do so until the monarch they've sworn themselves to dies. A monarch without concubines isn't to be trusted (and royals have been passed over in Tavamara's history for this reason). They have a long history with the priesthood, and it's considered one of the greatest honors in the kingdom.

It's always been very, very important to me that they do it willingly, that they're not slaves (and I definitely very much on purpose made one of their greatest enemies an enormous empire whose wealth is built on slavery).

I have no problem with people who write/read/enjoy slave fic, I will fight anyone who tries to come down on them. But it's a hard limit for me, and I wanted to write a story that had concubines and sexual service, submission and devotion and power plays, that didn't include slavery and rape and violence.

The King's Harem was a good start, and Sandstorm is the kind of adventurous romp that I love. But The Harem Master is definitely the one I'm proudest of so far. It takes place several generations before the other two, and many of the harem traditions in the first two are in fact established in THM.

Though Demir and his relationship with Ihsan and his harem are the main focus of the story, I was supremely happy I also finally got to include a princess and her harem. I've always put it off because women get treated horribly in M/M fiction, and like so many authors I didn't want to make readers angry and stop reading. But I'm really past done with sacrificing my own happiness and ideas for people who think that it's ever okay to hate on women. So you get a harem master, a prince, a princess, and all the people who love them.

And I'm not going to lie, one of my crowning moments is that my mom finally broke down and gave the Tavamara books a chance and she went from not really getting poly to demanding when the fuck I'm writing the next one, stop slacking Megan April Derr.

All my love to those who read it as a serial. I have a penchant for cliffhangers that stressed a few people out :3 So I'm grateful no one has actually killed me yet. I hope all those who have been patiently waiting for the ebook, and those who are taking a chance on something new, enjoy it.

Lord Demir has spent his life trying to appease a brutal, selfish king, and keep the concubines under his care alive—and now he is on the verge of losing everything. The council wants to abolish the harems, there are no heirs to the throne, and the foreigners control the Steward. One wrong move will tip tensions into civil war.

Crown Prince Ihsan returns to find his home in turmoil, and the royal court so full of vipers it's impossible to say which of them will strike first. Removing his father from the throne, one way or another, should be a simple matter. Staying alive and proving himself a worthy king will be far more difficult.

Crown Princess Euren has spent the last five years in hiding so that she could not be used against her father or Ihsan. But she is the daughter of a soldier, never meant to wear a crown, never trained to fight battles where words are the weapon of choice. If she hopes to keep herself and her loved ones alive, she'll have to learn fast.

LT3 | Amazon | ARe | Kobo

I hope everyone has a good rest of the week and a lovely weekend ^__^