Guest Post | Flashes by K.L. Noone

Today, we have the lovely K.L. Noone on a visit. They’re here to tell us a little about their flash fiction collection, Flashes. I love short stories and flash fiction. Welcome Kristin!

Hi there – and many thanks to Ofelia for letting me drop by!

My new release, Flashes, has just come out from JMS Books – I’m excited about this one, because it’s something I’ve always rather wanted: having enough short stories of my own to fill up a collection!

Flashes is unusual because it exists, or will exist, in two slightly different versions: the ebook contains only previously unpublished short stories (at least, unpublished – until now – by JMS Books!), but the paperback will contain those plus my previously published flash fiction with JMS! So those stories that’d be too short for print, otherwise – will get to be here and tangible and physical! So I’m thrilled.

Some of these are new stories with brand-new characters, and some are old friends; I thought about the order, and how we move from contemporary to fantasy to sci-fi and back…it was such a fun puzzle to fit together. The final story, which is new, actually makes official the crossover, or rather connection, between two sets of characters whom I love – we’ve had little nods and references before, like Wes and Finn from the Seasonal Stories watching a movie that stars Colby and Jason from the Character Bleed trilogy, and here we finally get them getting to work together, which I’ll admit just makes my little author-heart happy!

You also get a short story that’s really the first chapter of a novel-in-progress, which right now is a delightful first-meeting story, but eventually will be a whole high fantasy m/m romance, with King’s librarian Ember and book-thief Serenity (and yes, the name is ironic – he’s certainly disturbing Ember’s peaceful night!). I’ll include a snippet of that first meeting below!

I hope you enjoy these stories – I’ve loved writing all of them, little windows into characters and worlds and places, all with happy endings, of course – or in some cases new beginnings.

Buy links:

JMS Books :: Amazon

Bio:

K.L. Noone teaches college students about superheroes and Shakespeare by day, and writes LGBTQ+ romance – frequently paranormal or with fantasy elements, and always with happy endings – when not grading papers or researching medieval outlaw life. She also likes cats, craft beer, and the sound of ocean waves.

Flashes

From holiday decorating at a historic castle to werewolf FBI agents, from nightmares aboard a starship to a book-thief encountering a king’s brother in a fantastical library, from hurt and comfort and cinnamon pancakes to a cozy afternoon full of wedding planning, these collected stories bring together K.L. Noone’s flash and short fiction for the first time!

Some familiar characters make an appearance — Jason and Colby from the Character Bleed trilogy and Wes and Finn from the Seasonal Stories — and brand-new characters and stories await, including Ember the royal librarian, detective-fiction novelist Patrick, and interior decorator Rory.

Find all their happy endings, and more, in the sparkling short stories of Flashes!

Snippet from “Book-Thief”:

Emberly Lyon, reshelving the third volume of Gruyere’s History of Empire, startled a book-thief in the back room of the King’s library at half-past three in the morning.

Ember, one hand still clutching leatherbound pages, blinked at the intruder in lantern-light. The book-thief recovered from surprise first, and demanded, “What are you even doing here?”

“I was—” Instinctive guilt—he’d always been capable of losing time in a book, about which Chance teased him mercilessly, in the way of younger brothers—lost out to baffled anger. “I’m the King’s librarian! What are you doing?”

“I don’t suppose you’d believe I wanted to borrow a novel of seafaring navigation, shipwreck, and improbable feats of adventure?” The book-thief had a voice that laughed: wind over water, copper chimes in arched doorways, melody in sunshine. Ember couldn’t see much of him in library shadow, only the glance of a single dark-lantern’s rays across slender build, petite height, dark hair.

And that laughter. Beckoning.

He glared. “No one’s allowed in here after hours. No one’s allowed in here without my permission. And you’re stealing that!” Book-walls spiraled upward around them, a supportive tower sketched in silken grey, gilt-lettered spines, curious hollow spaces. He and Chance had been filling in those gaps as best they could for the past three years; the late King Brassen hadn’t cared much for reading. Every volume, and not only those in the more valuable back room, was his friend. “Put it back.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. A commission, you see.” Light as chatter across a ballroom, casual as a rowing-party on the Sweetwater; but this river glinted with robbery and danger. The book-thief had quite sensibly worn dark grey and green, fitted and shadowy under a hood; he wasn’t tall, and his voice sounded cheerful and irritatingly blithe, caught red-handed. Literature-handed. Mid-narrative. “Did you say you were the King’s librarian? The King’s librarian is—” He stopped.

“Yes,” Ember agreed, “you were saying?” and shifted weight, ever so slightly.

He and Chance did, in some ways, look alike—the tilt of eyes, that straight Lyon nose, the expressions on his half-brother’s face that Ember had glimpsed on his own in a mirror—but most people never saw that. Never saw past the height, the shoulders, and his skin, midway between King Brassen’s aged tawny gold and the shimmering onyx of the Araly dancer who’d caught the lion’s eye. Chance had the late Queen’s fairness and got sunburnt under rainclouds. Ember had waited in his chambers with aloe creams for years, after Brassen ordered his only legitimate son to keep up on all-day hunts.

His book-thief must be new to Lyonheart. Any person in the city’s market would’ve known. The King’s librarian was the King’s bastard older brother, and at a glance they did not resemble each other.

Ember tended to get stares in that market less because of his coloring specifically—though that was a part of it; traders came by from the Southern Continent often enough to be unusual but not singularly so—but because he loomed. Couldn’t help it. Their father’s muscles.

“The King’s librarian is someone who spends his days indoors with books, I was going to say.” Pale eyes flickered over him. Up and down. Lingering, Ember realized with a shock of thrilled outrage, on his shoulders, waist, below his waist. He couldn’t tell what color those eyes were under the hood, only that they danced in a ray of lamplight. “You, on the other hand, should be rescuing virgins and valiantly slaying monsters in perilous forests. Have you seen your arms, lately?”

That tone was either genuinely honest admiration or outrageous flattery; Ember choked on unexpected absurd laughter. “I’m preventing a crime, aren’t I? Put it back, please.”

“Do you know how difficult it was to break in here? You’ve actually got decent wards up. How’d you manage that?”

“Valiant monster-slayer secrets. Learned in a perilous forest. How did you—stop that!” His thief had begun inching toward the rear—and open, he noticed—window. Lyonheart sprawled sleepily outside, dreaming with the restlessness of an island city-state in the hours before dawn. Morning marketers and broadsheet-vendors and primrose-sellers would be stirring soon, bakeries opening, the drifting scents of strong tea and hot pies and fish-hauls and the clatter of early voices like a hundred melodies at once. Beyond darkened windows the sea lapped at shore, purring, wine-hued.