Like every other day, my alarm went off at 05:40 this morning. I stumbled out of bed, to say I got properly dressed would probably be a lie, but I put on pants and threw on a hoodie over the T-shirt I’d slept in. In the kitchen, I put on the coffee – a skill I have perfected over the years is putting on coffee while still mostly asleep. I then called the dog, and together we stumbled out to the hens to let them out.
I walked in again, a bit more awake now since I’d been outdoors, and poured some yoghurt into a bowl and checked my email while eating. Do you know what I found in the inbox? A cover!!!
Back in June, J.M. Snyder sent out an in-house submission call for Love in the Age of Social Distancing asking for 5-12k stories about dating during the pandemic. I thought it could be fun, so I said I’d write one.
Quincy is not the most lovable character (though I love him), not because he’s mean in any way, he’s just…well, he isn’t always focusing on the right things. It’s an Up North story, so a contemporary, standalone, M/M romance.
And here’s the cover!
Quincy Dean is one lucky guy. After months of virtual flirting, he’s convinced the man of his dreams is living next door. True, they’ve never spoken face-to-face, and William Johnson has never posted a picture of himself, but how many William Johnson’s could there be?
Quincy is positive the two of them would be great together. But if he’s ever going to get the chance to convince Will of that fact, he’s going to need to do it before his perfect man figures out he’s too good for Quincy’s little corner of Whiteport and disappears from his real life forever.
But how do you woo someone when you have to stay six feet apart? Direct messages are great, but they aren’t very romantic. And when Quincy begins to notice that Will’s messages don’t always match up with what he’s seeing through his blinds, he worries that even online he and his dream guy are drifting apart. Six feet or not, it might be time to ask Will out on a date.
Walter had never fallen in love before but he’d always thought it would be like the feeling when you slotted something into place and knew, even before you turned on the steam and watched the gears begin to move, that everything was where it was supposed to be. Even before the gears began to move smoothly, faster and faster, until everything was a steady contented hum. He’d heard that it was something like a chemical reaction, though. If it was, that was all right, because he was used to them. The trick was to make big, gloriously horrible balls-ups of the thing and remember to duck if it blew. And do it over and over again until you got it right.
Release day! Banger Challenge is the fourth story in the Up North series, but like all the previous ones it’s completely standalone.
Fred Munson likes his job as a traffic cop. He’s good at it. It’s his personal life that could use some improvement. With no friends, and being too shy to talk to anyone while out of uniform, when Fred is forced to use some of his vacation time, he has nothing to fill his days. At least not until he comes home to find his driveway blocked by a stranger with car troubles.