Okay, when Mate and I had just moved in (almost exACTly twenty-five years ago) we worked at T.G.I.Fridays.  It paid the rent (barely) and paid for school (with the help of credit cards) and I worked there until I got pregnant and Mate worked there until he got his paid internship at Intel.

Restaurant work is funny.

For one thing, it's HARD on the body-- and unless you master the ways of not beating the crap out of yourself, or work in a place with a slightly slower pace than your average chain restaurant, it really is better for the young.  And because of the pace--uber fast, uber urgent-- it reallycan seem to suck up your life through a straw.  I know a lot of my mangers had drug problems which stemmed from making the twelve hour days.  Dealing with irate customers (who are often being unreasonable--let's face it!) without ever really being able to be honest with them is sort of the optimum grooming ground for used car salesmen, and those of us who tend to wear our hearts on our sleeves end up fired.  (*cough*  Not that I was ever... oh hell, who am I fooling.    We all know I was fired for rudeness.  But if I'd known I was going to get fired for not sucking up enough, I would have told that flaming twat what I really thought of her!)  Very often, the only reason people don't quit isn't the money, and it's not pride in their jobs, although pride in honest work is always a plus.  No, the reason people don't quit is because the co-worker who just ran a ramekin of ranch dressing to that flaming twat on table twenty-three is your friend, and you'd help yourfriend through thick and thin, through poor tips and rich twits, and yourfriend will do the same for you. 

It's amazing how tight, how immediate, how permanent, those restaurant friendships seem.  Restaurant friends become roommates, become bridesmaids, become husbands... or, you know.  They're never heard from again. 

Because there are no guarantees, right?  Very often, the people working in restaurant work are working toward something, and once they get there?  Bye bye baby!

At the start of the book, Terrell has been working at Papiano's for a number of years, and Colby has been there for a year.  Terrell knowsthat sometimes, this job is where dreams go to die.  People with journalism degrees or film degrees or sociology degrees-- these people make outstanding restaurant employees.  The hours are flexible, and if they're competent, they can have an extra day a week to continue to work on the job they really wanted, and if they're smart enough to get the degree, they're smart enough to do the job and work with the people.  But eventually, that restaurant job that was only meant to be stop in the road... that becomes the road, and for some folks (I knew quite a lot of them) that's fine.  They're happy.  But for the people who had their whole identity pinned to a dream?

Well, there's a whole lot of bitter bartenders out there.

So at the start of the book, Terrell and Colby are friends-- but Terrell is very much aware of how tenuous that kind of friendship can be.  When Terrell makes the jump, decides to follow Colby into a relationship, it becomes very clear that if the relationship is going to continue, Papiano's is going to be the first thing they leave behind.

But that doesn't mean they can't have a whole lot of fun while they're there!

Bolt-Hole will be available Wednesday, March 27th Dreamspinner Press, Amazon, and All Romance e-books.  If you buy from DSP, you can use PayPal, and they DO send directly to your Kindle, and tomorrow night, I'll put the specific links up from my website--and in the meantime?  Let me know how you like.  I've been reluctant to write an interracial romance--not because I haven't seem them work and thrive, but because of some of the reaction from It's Not Shakespeare.  The critics who read that book and had experienced life from both sides of the fence loved it.  The critics who had only known people from one side were absolutely sure that I'd done the other side a tremendous disservice.  You can, no lie, find back to back interviews claiming that yes, I got the Hispanic community down to the details, but that I was painting repressed white people as a cruel stereotype, OR the exact reverse-- they knew people JUST like James, but I was being offensive with the portrayal of Rafi. 

After dealing with thatcritical mass, I had to wait until a very smart,very human character started talking in my ear before I decided to try another attempt at getting the American race experience right.  Terrell was that guy-- and I love him, a lot.  I just hope that the people reading about him see that I'm drawing from my experience in a racially diverse area, and from my own struggle to put my middle-class white upbringing into context with the kids I taught. By the time I left teaching, it was a no-brainer, but I had a lot of growing up to do in the meantime.  Terrell and Colby's relationship is the result of some of that growing up--and I hope you all love them like I do.

City Mouse

So, long ago-- twenty-five years, this fall actually--Mate and I had a non-fight.  See, we'd moved in together in June, but this was October.  School had started, and I was working full time and Mate was working and taking a break from school (which meant finding his reason to go to school while working, because he wasn't seeing the point twenty-five years ago) and the apartment was a disaster.

Now this was back when I still did housework--for one thing, our apartment was about the size of our kitchen and living room right now (which means it was miniscule, because our house ain't big)  and it was sort of bothering me.  I mean, I was DOING more at that point in time, right?

So I came home, sat down on the bed and woke Mate up and started telling him about my day.  He yawned, and I said, "Yeah, and I've got a paper in English and I hate taking Physics, it's making me crazy and I have to work tonight and I know you're off and if the apartment isn't clean when I get back I'll go sleep at my parents until it is."

Wait-- I was gonna what?

Yeah-- took us BOTH by surprise.

I was just so calm about it, but apparently, I'd hit my limit.  (Oh, if only I had that limit now.  You have no idea how foreign that concept seems at this moment.  Pretty much every room in the house is WAY over THAT line!)

Anyway, I got home and the apartment was pristine, and although I've never EVER threatened to leave him since, that did pretty much begin the sense of partnership we have now.  When one of us is busy, the other picks up the slack-- with the kids or with shopping or with whatever.  (Not the house, so much, alas...)

But all this partnership? It had to have it's snapping point, and that's where some of the groundwork for City Mouse came from.


Okay-- so the question you had to ask yourself at the end of Country Mouse, after Malcolm makes his grand romantic gesture, is, "What next?"

I mean, you've got the sweet American who is deceptively submissive (HA!) and the pushy Brit, who thinks he's a dom.  How exactly do you make that work in real life?  What are these two guys going to do to keep this relationship working?

Well, that's the question that Aleks and I asked each other as we were working on City Mouse, and it came down to two things:  food and work. 

Sounds simple, right?  But if you think about, living together really does come down to the simple stuff: sloppy or neat?  Eat in or eat out?  Have wild passionate chimp sex when the kids are gone or go to a movie?  Or, you know, both?  So food and work?  Those are two "staples" as Owen calls them that can determine whether or not two people are going to make it.  If they can agree on a compromise, then they'll make it.  If one guy's eating hamburgers all the time while the other one is eating salads, and they're constantly fighting over money?  That's gonna be a wash. 

That's the premise behind City Mouse.  We have Owen in the big city, getting a job (that Malcolm hates), becoming domestic (making food he's not wild about, because Malcolm has a pathological fear of gaining weight) and generally learning how to get on.  Like most honeymoons, it's passionate and sexy, and turbulent. 

Owen's snapping point turns out to be much different from mine and Mate's, and Malcolm's pushing point is different as well--but that same idea is there.  What are the things these two people need to create a successful partnership? 

And speaking of partnerships, hopefully mine and Aleks's partnership worked as well in this one as it did in the predecessor-- but we really did love writing this.  Once again, we both got together on Google docs, and the little pink cursor did it's magic dance.  I love dancing with Aleks--I hope to dance with him some more!

City Mouse is now available at Amazon, ARe, and Riptide publishing!  We hope you enjoy!

Okay-- that sounds REALLY inflated.  Basically what I'm doing is posting a short essay once a month, on the first Tuesday of that month, and inviting people to chat.  Now, in order to join the chat, you need to be a member of the Rainbow Romance Writers, and that's important because it's our guild, and guilds protect us and make us strong.  The essays will mostly be about craft and industry, but there may be other stuff thrown in.  Anyway,  I'm going to cross-post the essays here on my website-- no discussion here, but in case you're not a writer, and just want to see my stand on things, well, here you go.  This is Who You Are in 100 Words or Less:

Who Am I—in Fifty to One Hundred Words

 

By Amy Lane

 

Maybe someday, when the shame has faded a little, I will write a full article of all of the sins I committed when I was self-publishing.  I have lots of excuses—I was naïve, I was desperate, I was easily led astray—but the fact was simply this: I had not yet figured out who I was.

It was stupid, really.  All I needed to do was look at my author bio.

Your author bio says, in a very tiny space, what people can expect not just from your books but from your online persona.  Since most m/m authors work not just in the publishing industry but in the e-book industry, you need to choose your words, your anecdotes, your list of accomplishments with the idea in mind that this is your billboard—you can paint it any way you like. 

Think of it like this: if you were going to get three tattoos where the whole world would see them, what pictures would you get to symbolize who you are?

Now, for me, this isn’t just a hypothetical question.  On my arm, I have an elaborate tattoo that’s a pictograph of my children’s names, and on my shin I have one that represents Merlin the Teacher.  When I look back at my bios—and I’ve got several, for different publishers and spots on the web—my family is the first thing I mention, and (before it was taken away from me) my erstwhile profession is the second.  I’ve wanted for nearly a year now to get the elf from the cover of Litha’s Constant Whim put on my unadorned shoulder, and when that happens, I really will be a walking advertisement for the things I am proudest of. 

And my bio says it all. 

It also says I knit, my house is a disaster, and there is usually some sort of reference to or implication of my squirrel brain, and this is good too.  It means you can expect to find these things in my stories a lot, and that if you talk to me online, I’ll be earnest but not humorless, and sometimes, I will shout “squirrel” in a crowded room because that squirrel is shiny and interesting and everything else has faded into the background. 

And this entire accretion of details also tells people I am not particularly smooth and am craptastic with subterfuge and shiny appearances.  (Back when I started, it should have told me that the hard sell and writing my own reviews and suggesting to every fan that they review me on the Internet and fighting them for that last star is not who I am, but honestly, it didn’t take me long to figure that out on my own.)

And did I mention these details should say that I like to make language sit up, roll over, and go get the thing, the thing, the glorious thing?  Well, at least I hope that last part is true—in spite of the candor I work very hard at maintaining, I hope my bio doesn’t portray me without cleverness or some sort of skill that makes this writing thing a good fit.  That’s important too—whether it’s a display of verbal acuity or a helpful list of awards for work well done, you want to give people a reason to have faith that your work will be entertaining.  That is why people read, yes?

So that’s a lot to cover in fifty to one hundred words.  My suggestions for getting it done?

Well, that tattoo thing is a real possibility.  If you were going to make your body your billboard, which pictures would you choose?  What would you say about those pictures that you want people to hear?

You could also list the five very most significant things about you personally—and then elaborate. 

If that doesn’t work, think about the things that impress you about people and then look and see which of these qualities you possess and can put in your bio.

And no matter which technique you try, your finale is always the same: Revise.  Revise, revise, pass the bio around, and revise again, and then put it away for a day and revise some more.  Hone, whittle, tinker, sand, and smooth until absolutely every word of those few allotted is chosen like a stone for the crown of the Goddess herself.  If you choose the words that represent you carefully, you won’t have to make those stones shine—they’ll shine by merit alone.