Fridays at Ofelia’s | There Will Be Aliens

Guest-Post

Hi! Holly here again 😀 Aliens, nay or yay?

On March 20th, it was Extraterrestrial Abductions Day, and I didn’t think we should let the day slip us by without giving it some special love, so I wrote a story…

There Will Be Aliens is an M/M version of the Mars Needs Women trope without being Mpreg. We have a planet called Negudade and they have a problem there. For some reason, the inhabitants have lost most of their emotions and the females no longer want to have children.

In an attempt to save the future of the planet, they sent a small group of males to Earth to capture a group of women. Their hope is by mating the human women, they’ll be able to have offspring able to feel and, in the future, want families of their own.

The idea of a species with human traits but with numbed emotional responses fascinates me. It’s not a huge part of the story, it’s the reason the Negudade come to Earth, but it’s something I’d love to explore more in another story on some future occasion.

Carlo, one of the main characters, was never meant to be taken, but when the aliens tried to take his best friend, Grace, he fought them, and Zenon, the captain of the spaceship, is far more interested in Carlo than any of the women they are to capture.

Extraterrestrial-Abduction-Day

Excerpt:

Zenon watched one creature stand. It was male. He’d seen pictures of them so they’d know what not to take, but this man… He had fair skin, no visible claws or fangs. Zenon suspected he could’ve watched him for years and not grow bored. His eyes changed shape, his facial expression—he’d never seen anyone show so much emotion. He didn’t know if anyone on Negudade could harbor as much emotion.

Their information claimed Earthlings didn’t have fangs or claws, and the man didn’t show any, but Zenon had his doubts. A species wouldn’t survive if they couldn’t defend themselves, and there were animals on Negudade that looked harmless until threatened—then teeth, claws, spikes, or poison appeared.

He hoped they weren’t poisonous.

Be careful of them.” He nodded at Brox to attack from the right as he edged to the left.

Brox spoke in a low voice. “I’ll take the female, you disarm the male.”

He appeared disarmed already, but Zenon nodded. He expected the male would run off to save himself. A Negudade would unless they were on a contract to protect the person they were with. He took a quick step forward, so he could catch the man when he tried to escape.

The female screamed, and the man, instead of running off, hit Brox in the jaw when he tried to grab her. Zenon stared. What was he doing?

Anek took a step forward, but Ghurva didn’t as much as twitch.

Zenon studied Brox, but he looked unaffected by the blow.

Why isn’t he running?” Brox touched his jaw. “He’s not strong.”

The man glanced at them, looked over his shoulder at the female, and said something. Zenon had a language chip embedded, everyone on the ship did, but he couldn’t make sense of what the male said. Perhaps he was breaking their contract. It was the smartest thing he could do.

Water spilled from the female’s eyes. “Is the female ill?” He didn’t look away from the Earthlings. When no reply came, he glanced at Ghurva. “Ghurva?”

I don’t know.”

The male doesn’t appear alarmed by the symptoms.” Anek took another step forward. “It’s most likely not contagious, or he’d moved away.”

A strange tightness wrapped around Zenon’s ribcage. Could the male be infected by whatever the female had?

Then the man nodded, and as he took a step forward, the female jumped down on the other side of the strange wide outdoor chair. She ran.

Shall I go get her?”

Zenon nodded at Brox. “Anek, follow in case there are more Earthlings around.” He took a step forward, and when the man tried to hit him, he caught his arm and secured him—though careful not to touch any of the pale skin in case it was covered in poison—and slung him over his shoulder. He’d expected him to weigh more. He was short but didn’t look unhealthily thin, so he should’ve weighed more.

Where are you taking him?” Ghurva gave him a curious look—no one he’d ever met could give curious looks except Ghurva. Another sign he wasn’t like most Negudade.

I’m bringing him.”

No.”

Zenon bared his teeth. “Are you questioning me?”

Captain.” Ghurva nodded, Zenon assumed to let him know Ghurva was aware of his status, but he kept on talking so it didn’t make a difference. “Our orders are ten females. No males.”

I’m taking him for me. We have space and supplies for one more. I will have none of the females.”

Ghurva shook his head. Watching him made Zenon dizzy. Why couldn’t he be like normal people and tell him what he meant instead of using gestures?

No, but—”

Enough.” Zenon strode toward the ship while the female’s scream came closer and closer.

Blurb:

therewillbealiens - smallCarlo Russo is having the worst day. Not only has he lost his job, caught his boyfriend cheating, and had one too many shots with his best friend Grace, now he’s seeing aliens too. Big, black, tail-equipped aliens. After a futile struggle, he and Grace find themselves on a spaceship leaving Earth.

Zenon Scoreceds Qhainqons doesn’t know what it is about the earthling male. Their mission is to bring back ten females in hopes of them being able to provide their planet with children, but he wants the male. What he’s going to do with the male, he doesn’t know, but he’s claiming him as his payment for going on the mission.

Carlo doesn’t approve of kidnapping, but the aliens aren’t too bad, and once the language chip is installed, he finds it entertaining to talk to them. Zen in particular. They’re standoffish and never show any emotion, but Carlo has no problem cuddling up next to Zen at night.

All Zenon wants is to spend time with Carlo, but it’s his job to get them all home in one piece. Will he be able to keep Carlo safe from all the dangers lurking along the trip? He has to because Carlo is his, and he’s not letting him go.

Buy Links

books2read/ThereWillBeAliens :: Amazon.com :: JMS Books

About Holly Day

According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee. 

Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time. 

Connect with Holly @ https://lnk.bio/xpae or visit her website @ hollydaywrites.wordpress.com 

Fridays at Ofelia’s | Eight Acts

Guest-Post

The lovely A.L. Lester is here on a visit. If you think being a writer is to sit down and create fantastical worlds when and if you feel like it, you’ve misunderstood what it is we do. Being a writer is amazing, but at times it’s super hard, crippling even. Today, Ally will tell you about one part of being an author people seldom think about.

Bloggers Block

I have spent a few days this week like a rabbit paralysed in the headlights of this blogpost. I just couldn’t think of anything relevant or entertaining to write about Eight Acts (new release, see below etc etc!) and it’s been stressing me out massively. So this morning, as I was attempting to trim Mr AL’s hair and moaning at him about it whilst he was pinned down and couldn’t escape, he finally said well, why don’t you write about how difficult it is to write things? I stabbed his ear with the kitchen scissors and said that seemed like a good idea.

So that’s what this is about.

Eight Acts is a companion novella to Taking Stock…they can be read independently, but some of the characters cross over. Taking Stock was a labour of love really. It fell out of my own frustration at my body’s inability to do what I want it to, my mother having a stroke as I was writing it and my recollections of the farming community where I grew up. It had a strong cast of supporting characters and Adrian and Percy were sufficiently interesting for me to want to explore their relationship too. The novella itself just seemed to flow out of me after Taking Stock was done.

Sometimes that’s how it is. But sometimes squeezing words out is a horrible, painful process that isn’t enjoyable at all. For some reason, writing blog posts and guest pieces for other people has been like that this time round. I have written for our friend Nell Iris and I wrote something for LoveBytes as part of a blogtour. But now, I’m stuck. I was going to try and do another couple of things for myself and for the JMS blog, but I can’t seem to get to it.

I’m not sure whether this is because Eight Acts is quite short for me—it’s just over twenty thousand words—or whether it’s because it deals with a difficult subject. Although gay sex was legalised to some degree in the UK in the summer of 1967, harassment and social and legal consequences were still commonplace. I am very conscious that these are real things and real people I have written about and I think that maybe that is why I’m finding it hard to write five hundred words of froth to grab people’s interest.

I’m also having trouble with my next ‘big project’ though, so perhaps it’s not that at all. Perhaps I’m just in a slow period. Instead of finishing the first book of my new trilogy (out in July!), I have been distracting myself by writing short love stories around Celtic myths that aren’t in my usual style at all and self-publishing them. I think perhaps because I don’t have anything invested in them, it’s something I’m doing for myself rather than anyone else—if anyone else likes then then, yay!—it’s not a pressure. Whereas writing to meet commitments is intrinsically more stressful.

I think this has been a very hard year for lots of people and I keep telling myself that it’s okay to have a few off days, especially since the kids have now gone back to school and Mr AL and I have time for personal care, cutting one-another’s hair/ears, and sleeping in the afternoons! I’m hoping that when I’m more rested, when Littlest has had her jab and is safer, the words will flow more easily. I don’t know about you, but I could do with everything flowing a bit more easily after the last twelve months.

So, without further ado, here is some stuff about Eight Acts.

Eight Acts

Eight Acts

It’s the summer of 1967 and the Sexual Offences Act has just decriminalized consensual gay sex in private between two men over twenty-one. Percy Wright and his friend Les Barker have both taken temporary jobs teaching English as a foreign language in London during their long summer break from teaching at a rural boarding school near Oxford.

Thirty-three year old Percy is keen to soak up some theatre, music and general culture, whilst the younger Les is also keen to experience the varied gay social scene. When Les picks up a man called Phil at the box office of the Albert Hall when he goes to buy tickets to a Promenade Concert, Percy inadvertently gets thrown together with Adrian Framlingham, Phil’s friend.

Adrian is all the things Percy likes in a man…funny, kind and steady. When Les gets hurt, Percy turns to Adrian for support, but as the end of the summer looms it seems as if their affair will come to a natural end.

What will happen when Percy goes back to his everyday life as a house-master? Will he and Adrian stay in touch? Does he even want a long-distance relationship when arranging to meet someone for sex is still illegal, even if the act itself is not?

A 20k novella that’s set five years before Taking Stock. Stand alone.

Buy Eight Acts

About A. L. Lester

A.L. Lester

Writer of queer, paranormal, historical, romantic suspense. Lives in the South West of England with Mr AL, two children, a badly behaved dachshund, a terrifying cat and some hens. Likes gardening but doesn’t really have time or energy. Not musical. Doesn’t much like telly. Non-binary. Chronically disabled. Has tedious fits.

WebsiteSocial Media and other stuff

Summer of Love

Guest Post | Blown Away by Holly Day

Cover-Reveal

Hi! Holly Day here. I’m taking over the blog for a while – Ofelia is okay with that, I promise LOL. I thought I’d drop by for a quick visit and show off my latest cover.

I don’t know if you know this, but I like to celebrate things. Everyone needs a little celebration in their lives. On April 12th it’s Big Wind Day, and to celebrate, I wrote a stormy little story called Blown Away.

Where are you on bears? Personally, I like a grumpy bear shifter. Espen Urso, the bear in Blown Away, isn’t so much grumpy as he is hungry – all the time.

I could talk about Espen and Arvid, a poor bird shifter omega stranded in the storm, but the reason I came here today was to show off the cover. I’ll be back later to share excerpts and stuff at a later date, but let’s focus on the cover today.

I really like what JMS Books is doing with my covers, there is this colour theme. Or calling it a theme might be wrong, but the covers match even though all stories are stand-alone. Want to see?

Blurb Blown Away

Espen Urso would rather stay inside and enjoy a nice, sweet cake than be out in the worst storm of the year. But there’s a group of alpha shifters trespassing, and he needs to defend his territory and keep the people in his village safe. A group of wolf shifters he can scare off, but when he realizes they’ve hurt a defenseless little bird, he loses his patience.

Arvid Rai is having a bad day. He’s an omega on the run, with a group of alphas on his tail. If there hadn’t been a storm, he could have easily flown away before the stupid wolves got their hands on him, or the angry bear noticed he was in his territory. But there is a storm, and the idiot who grabbed him broke his wing, so now he can’t fly anywhere. Still, he deems it best to stay with the growly bear rather than having the other alphas fight over him.

Espen has never believed in the myth of omegas, and it isn’t until he takes Arvid in he realizes how much trouble he’ll be in when shifters from near and far learn he has one in his home. Will he be able to keep Arvid safe from other shifters? Is it even possible to defend his territory with an omega in it?

Pre-order Blown Away in the JMS shop (20% off)

About Holly

According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee. 

Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time. 

Connect with Holly @ https://lnk.bio/xpae or visit her website @ hollydaywrites.wordpress.com