Celebrate the Rainbow With Romance

By far, my darkest box set is “The Prince and the Painter,” which is about the love between two adult students and how it is threatened by two men: one who’s a stalker/rapist and the other who’s a serial killer. If Happily Ever After following intense personal and relationship drama is your thing, you’ll probably enjoy “The Prince and the Painter” box set. The songs to inspire this book were all dark except for one: “Hope” by Shinedown. Check out their music video here, after a brief disclaimer: Disclaimer: I did not get permission to share this song, and I’m making no money off the artist. Listen and enjoy—this is just for fun.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpIxsRWWtPc&list=RDkpIxsRWWtPc&start_radio=1

 Interview with Mychael Black I have about a hundred questions about your bio. Please let me know what inspired you to create a second pen name. Which one came first? I’ve been writing gay erotic romance as Mychael Black for over 20 years now, but my first literary love is fantasy (thanks, Tolkien). I started writing as Katherine Cook (my real name, actually) to follow my dreams of being a fantasy author. Although there is sex (some explicit, some not) in Katherine’s stories, the romances are not the main plot. Furthermore, the pairings are more varied than Mychael’s. Readers who want fantasy without heavy romance know they can pick up a Katherine Cook story and get that.   What’s the most important thing readers should know about your two pen names and the different books each one writes? Mychael Black is 100% gay male romance (including transmen). Katherine Cook, however, is fantasy, first and foremost. There may be romance; there may not be.   What book are...

Going forward in the timeline of SearchLight, which started with Three Brothers Fair and the birth of the world’s most powerful magical creature protection agency, we pick up with my first novel, “Dragon Food.” This novel started out with a dark soundtrack, especially since I wrote it while escaping a terribly abusive relationship. However, the song that endures to this day is “Firework” by Katy Perry because a lover sees potential, spark, and color in the one he wants to seduce. Here’s the video, after a brief disclaimer: Disclaimer: I did not get permission to share this song, and I’m making no money off the artist. Listen and enjoy—this is just for fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw&list=RDQGJuMBdaqIw&start_radio=1 Mark and Luke are as different as different can be. Luke is a sexually daring, hardly-ever-serious happiness-wish genie. He tends to: ·         Leap first into the sack and ask questions later ·  ...

A Short story Menage a Tree Emily Carrington Werewolf’s Choice/Para Schooled 1/SearchLight multiverse As Christmas approaches, Don and Cassidy raise Xavier’s spirits.                   For a rare afternoon, almost the whole Afon pack was gone from the pack house in the Panamint Mountains. The only three members left were Don and his mates.                 Everyone was at work, which was technically where Don was supposed to be. But he had no faculty or students to see for therapy, so he’d driven up here to sneak in an hour’s worth of time with Cassidy and Xavier.                 They really shouldn’t just be lounging in front of the fireplace. It was entirely possibly someone would come home early. But Xavier loved the roar of the fire and the s...

(Where I talk about a great book I’ve read, recently or not) The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey was my first introduction to magic (or Magick, with a capital M and a “k,” as it’s called in the book) other than werewolves, vampires, or ghosts. I’d been reading about ghosts for years, both because I feel a weird kinship with the dead sometimes and because ghost stories fascinate me. The Fire Rose was something different. Taking place in the 1800s, when the expansion out West is fairly underway but there are still lawless places, a female scholar seeks a position as a governess. I won’t give away the story, but let’s just say she finds something other than unruly, spoiled children.                 When I read this book as a nineteen-year-old in my first year away at college, I did so because it was given to me by my crush, Skya. She was a flamboyant, but definitely straight, woman whom I admired for her class and...

This began as a happy accident. I tried to type “First Friday” and it came out “First Furday” instead. This gave me a great idea: why not introduce you to all my furry critter interactions.                 This week: my guide dog’s new talent.                 He’s a poodle and they’re notoriously smart and can get into trouble. Today, while I was at Panera, my guide dog told me he wouldn’t let me step off a curb into some grass. I took this to mean he wouldn’t do it himself, but when I removed his harness, he stepped right onto the grass. After he completed his business, I took him back inside. My friend, who’d been watching the whole thing, asked me why I had tried to step off into a culvert!                 My guide dog saved me a nasty fall.   ...