Acceptance of my YA story

I met a new friend at the Gay Romance Literature retreat and he offered to take a look at my Young Adult short story because he's young himself and I'm well... older. :)  He's also the new editor at Featherweight Publishing which is a part of MLR Press that publishes children's and young adult titles.








The story is the one based on the following picture and was written for the Gay-Straight Alliance group's "Traveling to Better Project" on GoodReads.

It's only 5,000 words but I struggled big time with it, more than likely because it's a whole different way of writing. I think it ended up being pretty sweet and yesterday I got an email from Featherweight saying it had been accepted and sending me a contract. I won't get any royalties from this story and neither will Featherweight, as you can see in the explanation below, all the proceeds will go to a charity of my choice. I think that's a pretty cool thing and it still gets my name out there as a published author.  I'm not sure when it's coming out yet but please consider giving it a go when it does - it is for charity after all. :)

--Featherweight Press is currently seeking submissions for their upcoming Helping Hands line of stories. The Helping Hands stories focus on GLBT characters and issues. The author and editor royalties from all stories in the Helping Hands line will be donated to a charity dedicated to helping GLBT youth that the author chooses.--

In other news, I just finished the line edits for Finally Home and I think the next step is galleys - don't ask me what that is though. Guess I'll find out. Did I mention it comes out on December 27. Lol - I'm sure I'll mention it again.  I also have 8000 words on my NaNoWriMo, largely due to something we do on twitter called Word Wars. It's a great source of creativity and yeah, competition too. As long as I keep up my pace, I should be okay.

Enjoy your weekend, friends. And please leave me a comment so I'm not so lonely over here in the blog world. (I'm not begging yet but...)

Inspirational pic for a YA story

I've been brainstorming about a YA m/m romance that I'd like to write based on this pretty picture. Isn't it sort of serene and beautiful? The only problem, besides all the WIPs I already have on the go, is that YA is a totally different ballgame so to speak. I'll have to watch the language and the sexual content but that's jut a different challenge, right?

Anyhow, I'm going to give it a go so now I need to start my wheels turning. Usually I have a name for my characters right away but none have hit me yet. Do any of you look at the picture and have names that just jump out at you? If so, definitely throw them out there for me to consider.

Have a good Monday. :)

PS I just have to say how excited it makes me to see "Outfoxed" on the All Romance site - I know it's not really published and it's free, but it's still very, very cool. :D