Changes Coming Down (anthology story) released

I know I said I wasn’t writing any more freebies for a bit. I have my books in existing series waiting for me to work on them. But here’s another freebie. It wasn’t my idea, honestly…

For those who are members of the Goodreads M/M Romance Group, you may know that there are some book-reading games there. I’ve played Bingo, where teams read books for categories that fill up a bingo card. It’s a lot of fun, a chance to be pushed to read that book about “sex with aliens” or “dystopian M/M” that you otherwise would never pick up.

Another game is the Scavenger Hunt (SH). I didn’t play, but in that game, for the last six months, teams of readers chose books for their cover and contents, looking for a set of awarded points. So say, if you could read a book with a twin bed (2 points), flavored lube (2 points), an island (3 points), BDSM (1) and cowboys (1) – then your team could collect 9 points. It sounds like it was a lot of fun. (As someone who hates to be pulled out of a book while reading, I don’t know if it’s a good match for me. But it gathered a very enthusiastic group of players.)

Most of the games are run by a wonderful lady named Katie (Mistress of Merriment.) Other than about a week which she took off to have a baby, she’s been tireless in helping us have reading fun all year. The Scavenger Hunt folks decided it would be nice to do a book for her, as a thank-you gift. It would be the holy grail of scavenger hunt books, the one with all the possible points in it. They decided to make it an anthology (because time-travelling, cross-dressing, paranormal cowboys with butt plugs, bacon-and-egg breakfasts, and mail… started to get silly. More about that later.)

One of the SH people suggested they could try to bring in a few extra authors, to round out the writing crew. They had two months to write the stories and compile them, if this was to be a New-Year’s, end-of-the-game, congrats-on-the-baby gift. And someone, (Marc, I’m looking at you,) suggested I might do one.

Well, I’m impressed by everything Katie does, and then there was the challenge. They still needed to get a bunch of points into a story, like the major themes of Cowboys, and Sports, and Law Enforcement… all of which had to involve main characters. Plus a musical instrument, a mansion, sports equipment, an elevator… You see where this is going, right?

I said, “Hell, I can write a short story with all of those in the span of a month.”

Except it turned out I couldn’t. I could, however, write a 64K short novel about a sheriff (Casey), a cowboy (Will), and a hockey player (Scott), in less than a month. And title it, Changes Coming Down.

Changes Coming Down is my first published M/M/M story. It’s about an established trio, coping with some upheavals in their lives. There’s a bit of a mystery thread, and a little coming out drama. Plus the elevator, the mansion… I had fun writing it, and might even do a sequel someday. It’s not fully polished, given the time frame, (and hockey fans – there’s only a little actual hockey) but hopefully it will make a decent free read.

The anthology is titled Hunting Under Covers and is a free release from ARe books, Smashwords and Divergent Publishing where J. Vaughn did the production on the book. (Big thank-yous to J.!) Aimee Brissay, Kathleen Hayes, Shayla Mist, ME Sanford, and J. Vaughn and Katies Crewman contributed their six short stories, plus we created one group-round-robin get-everything-in effort of over-the-topness – Demons, Time Travel and Bacon, Oh My. (Where we found out just how silly cramming all the SH points in one short story could get. Well, we had to try, although I don’t think we quite succeeded. It was fun.)

Despite the lightheartedness of the effort, all the stories other than the round robin are genuine M/M fiction. I think you’ll enjoy reading them in this anthology. Maybe you’ll find a new author you’ll like. At least you may be cheerfully entertained. And now, back to our regularly scheduled writing…