Johnny Murdoc

Today and tomorrow only (January 3rd and 4th, 2012), my short story “Bodies in Motion” is available as a free ebook from Amazon.com!

When young science teacher returns to his neighborhood high school, he finds himself capturing the attention of Nathan Derricks, the new assistant coach. Is this history—jock vs. nerd—repeating itself, or does Derricks have something else in mind?

For those of you who got new Kindles for Christmas, this is a great chance to try out my work! (There are also numerous apps for reading Kindle books on your smartphone, laptop, or tablet, so no one’s left out!)

Previously published in Best Gay Erotica 2011 and currently available exclusively from Amazon.com in my ebook anthology Hard Lessons, “Bodies in Motion” is a personal favorite of mine.

From Best Gay Erotica 2011‘s guest editor, author Kevin Killian:

And now, for two whole days, everyone can ruin their suits!

And just in case you’re wondering why I’m doing this exclusively through Amazon, and/or shilling for them so much, check out this post.

I am not traditionally a Christmas person. As a gay/vegan/atheist/occasional-anti-capitalist, the holiday just presents all sorts of personal dilemmas and opportunities for grousing.

This year, I decided that I was done grousing, though. Sure, I’ll still calmly explain why I think the way my fellow humans behave during “the holidays” is something to be concerned about, why I don’t buy gifts for anyone over the age of thirteen, why the general assumption that everyone in America is Christian causes undue stress on those of us who are not, and more, but only if I’m asked. Otherwise, I’m tired of getting rankled every time I see a Christmas tree or hear “Jingle Bells.”

Still, even I was surprised when I decided to read a Christmas-themed novella. I happened across it (as much as anyone “happens across” anything on the internet), decided it sounded like a fun, possibly nostalgic read. And it was.

I’m referring to Lone Star, by Josh Lanyon. I’ve never read any of Lanyon’s other works, but he’s a pretty big name in gay and M/M romance/erotic fiction. If Lone Star is any indication, he deserves the acclaim.

Lone Star tells the story of Mitchell Evans, a ballet dancer who returns to his home in Texas to take care of his father’s estate. When a freak (and possibly imagined) encounter with a reindeer causes Mitchell to wreck his car, who happens to be following close behind him but his old flame, Web Eisley? Web, now a Texas Ranger, helps Mitchell get home and reestablishes the connection between Evans and the friends and family he knew before he moved away.

It’s a sweet, short story that doesn’t rely too much on Christmas miracles, but is driven instead by the long-suppressed feelings between the two characters. While Mitchell is certainly flawed and occasionally annoying, Web is a solid, caring character and you can see how the two would fall in love.

Lone Star is available as a standalone novella or as part of a collection, Men Under the Mistletoe. There’s a review of the anthology over at USA Today’s Happily Ever After romance blog, and according to them, the other stories might be worth checking out as well. I am about to spend the weekend in Tennessee with my partner’s family, and maybe a few more gay romance stories is just the tonic I’ll need to get through the weekend.

Also: whiskey.

I may have made a mistake today. I had an “aw, fuck it” moment and clicked a button and—hours later, of course—came across advice that suggested maybe I shouldn’t have clicked that button. Reasonable, sound advice.

Such is the life of the non-lawyer minded self-publisher.

It’s possible that it wasn’t a mistake at all. If it was or wasn’t a mistake of astronomical proportions, I promise I’ll tell you all about it in three months time.

For those three months, one of my e-books is enrolled in Amazon’s KDP Slect program. Look right over there, in the right-hand column, and you’ll see the words “Available exclusively at Amazon.com until March 10th, 2012″ right under Hard Lessons. I didn’t initially plan on doing it to Hard Lessons. I meant to do it to the e-book “single” of my story “Bodies in Motion,” which I was planning on selling for $0.99 as an incentive buy.

First, a bit about KDP Select: Amazon currently offers Prime members the ability to download a number of books for free. The publisher (that’s me!) still gets paid… something (this is determined by a bunch of stupid math). I wouldn’t have done this if I was doing it just for the payout, at least directly. Through most ebook sites, a $0.99 ebook would net me all of $0.35 royalty per download.

However, there’s the possibility that enrolling in the program could mean a lot of good exposure; readers who might not ordinarily try my work out for two or three bucks certainly might try it out for free, and then—given that they’re bound to love it—they would march on to pay full price for my other ebooks. So far, it’s proven to be a relatively reliable way of building sales for other authors.

What I didn’t think about—or catch, when reading the fine print—is that the content can’t be for sale in other formats, or in other stores. Chances are, Amazon’s lawyers are going to consider having the story available in an anthology as falling into those forbidden categories. (Luckily, this only refers to me selling things I have the rights to; the story is also available in Cleis Press’s Best Gay Erotica 2011, but I don’t have the right to pull that one out of bookstores.)

To be on the safe side, I’m enrolling Hard Lessons in the same program; I already can’t sell it through other venues for the next 90 days, so I might as well see if it can help accrue the benefits that I was hoping “Bodies in Motion” would alone. Amazon already makes up the bulk of my ebook income, so I’m not missing out on a massive amount of sales. I am possibly inconveniencing readers, but only for a short time, and I hope that the benefits might outweigh those losses. (There are also ways to convert non-DRM Kindle books to other formats; if there’s enough curiosity about this, send me a message on Facebook or Twitter or by e-mail and I’ll throw some links up.)

Regardless, this will only be in effect until March 11th, 2012. If it’s shockingly effective, and I find myself swimming in a vault full of cash, a la Scrooge McDuck, it may go on for longer. But probably not. Or at least, not with the same book.

Now, there’s a chance that I didn’t make a mistake at all. Even if this works out for the best, though, I still made a stupid decision without doing the necessary research. I should have well-and-learned by now that any move that restricts what I can do with my writing in any venue is one that should be considered closely, not decided on randomly while feeling slightly in the dumps about this month’s sales numbers.

Writers: read contracts. Understand what you’re getting into. Make decisions based on logic and understanding. Read Chuck Wendig’s The Precarious Portentious Perils of Self-Publishing. In fact, read everything that man writes. I recently finished Double Dead: so much fucking fun.

It’s 1:00 in the morning, so I’m going to post this shit, and then maybe I’ll post something nice for you later. I finished a story on Sunday, one that frees a huge, awesome project up to move forward. Maybe I’ll share a taste with you.

So, today’s Black Friday here in America, and people are getting pepper sprayed just for going to Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart, so I may have secretly laughed when I heard that one. And then I cried a little, because people are fucking stupid.

That’s another story for another day, though.

Because I’m having a sale this weekend. I mean, why not? Through Monday, you can use the coupon code “yeshomo” (without the quotes) in the Queer Young Cowboys shop and get any of my ebooks for 50% off!

This sale is only valid in the Queer Young Cowboys shop—nowhere else!

That means you can get the following books for $2.50 or less!

Just head on over to the shop and enter the coupon code “yeshomo” (no quotation marks!) and get 50% off digital downloads!

My family is celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, so the boyfriend and I have a whole day of sitting around the house and relaxing (although, rest assured, we will be venturing out tonight to see The Muppets, because, fuck yeah: Muppets!).

My buddy Marlen Boro has been running a new photo set of Joey, including the above photo, which Marlen dedicated to me on his blog. It may be apparent at this point that I’m a little smitten with Joey; the guy has his own tag on my blog, now.

It’s a little crazy to me that I’ve only posted once since Halloween; that’s lax, even by my standards. It’s difficult, trying to balance time between writing, working and living, and the writing time can get split up by so many things. I’ve got more than a few projects that I’m juggling right now, so the blog tends to take a back seat. Hopefully, the work that I put out will make up for it.

I’ve also been reading a lot lately. Since acquiring an ebook reader, I’ve been making my way through some gay romance/erotica books. I’ve ruminated a bit in the past here about romance vs. erotica and I still think about it a lot, but I won’t bore you. I will say that I’ve enjoyed the books that I’ve read, and that they’re just as filthy as anything I’ve ever written.

The first two that I read (recommended by Sarah of the Rain on the Roof blogs) were by JL Langley. Both books were about gay cowboys in Texas. The first, Tin Star, tells the story of a young man, Jamie, who gets kicked off of the family ranch when he comes out of the closet. To his rescue comes Ethan, Jamie’s older brother’s best friend, who owns another local ranch and hires Jaimie on as a ranch hand. Ethan’s gay, too, but has always kept his sexuality a secret for fear of what his friends and neighbors would think. Things quickly heat up as Ethan and Jamie confront the lust they’ve always had for one another. The plot itself feels melodramatic at times, occasionally downright soap-operatic. The people of the small Texas town where this all takes place don’t take kindly to an openly gay cowboy and Jamie receives threats and more-than-threats of violence. Still, through all of the melodrama, a giddy, horny story of lust and love races through the book, with nearly every chapter punctuated by an explicit sex scene. I popped a boner more than once, but I also found myself completely enamored with Ethan and Jamie. I’d be lying if I didn’t say my heart swelled more than my dick did.

The Tin Star worked so well for me that I immediately downloaded the follow-up, The Broken H. The Broken H isn’t a sequel, per se, although Jamie and Ethan make appearances throughout the book. This time we follow Shane Cortez, the mid-40′s foreman of the titular ranch. Cortez has considered himself part of the family who owns the ranch ever since they took him in decades earlier, when his own family kicked him out. When Cortez’s paternal boss suffers a heart attack, Cortez finds himself face to face with Sheriff Grayson Hunter, the ranch’s prodigal son. Shane and Gray have a lot of emotional baggage to deal with, but they find themselves in bed together quickly. The Broken H. The Broken H has fewer soap opera elements than the previous book, although there are death threats and accusations of impregnation, but I also found myself less emotionally invested in Shane and Gray than I did Ethan and Jamie. Still, I enjoyed the book and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Tin Star.

If you’re curious about just how explicit Langley’s writing is, here’s an excerpt from The Broken H. The Broken H:

Finally, Shane broke their kiss, flipping Gray’s shirt over his head and dropping it to the floor. A finger ran down Gray’s torso, starting between his smooth pecs and ending at his navel. Shane dipped that meandering digit inside the hollow, then followed the trail of hair, starting below his navel, until he hit the top of the low waistband of Gray’s jeans.

Gray watched Shane watch him, those brown eyes practically scorching his body as they followed the line down. Then, before Gray even realized what he was about, Shane bent over and traced the same path with his tongue.

He couldn’t breathe, his breath hitched in his throat and refused to leave. Was this really happening? “Shane …”

“Relax.” Shane rose and kissed him again, this time charting a moist course and nipping along his neck and shoulder, leaving goose bumps in his wake. When he got to Gray’s collarbone, he reached down and unfastened Gray’s jeans.

Oh, God! Gray’s balls pulled tighter, his cock jerking in anticipation. When that tanned, callused hand slipped inside and found his prick, his hips pushed forward, practically begging. Shane squeezed and rubbed through the thin cotton of his boxers. His prick started to leak. Shane moaned and squeezed again as his mouth surrounded Gray’s nipple.

“Fuck!” He pulled Shane closer, cradling his head against his chest with one hand, stroking his back with the other. If he was only going to get to do this once, he was going to seize the opportunity and finally play with that glorious and silken black mane. He snatched the end of Shane’s braid, pulled the band off and unraveled it. How many times had he dreamed of combing his fingers through it? Lifting several strands, he let them fall again.

Shane sighed softly and moved his mouth down Gray’s chest. When he reached Gray’s dick, he hooked his thumbs through the waistband of the jeans and pushed them and Gray’s boxers down in one quick motion.

Gray’s prick bobbed free, standing straight up, feeling unbelievably sensitive in the cool air. He was so fucking hard he ached. He wanted Shane’s mouth, his hands, something … anything on his cock. “Holy shit!”

Shane’s tongue flicked over the tip, then engulfed his dick in the moist heat of his mouth. Gray groaned, fingers tightening in the thick black hair. Shane groaned too, then stood up, making Gray cry out at the loss of those beautiful lips.

“Bedroom, Grayson.” Shane leaned forward and brushed a quick kiss against him. “Now.”

I’m currently reading Damon Suede’s Hot Head. It’s an entirely different beast from Langley’s books. It’s too early for me to give it a review, but I’m enjoying it. The characters are more complex and Suede’s writing is minimal but brutal at times. I’m struggling with the “gay for you” theme of the book, but I find the writing and the story compelling enough to keep reading it.

Interestingly, Hot Head is in the final rounds of the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards; it’s the sole gay (or M/M, as it’s commonly referred to) book in the Best Romance category, and it’s up against titans of romance such as Nora Roberts, Kresley Cole, Gena Showalter, and JR Ward. Regardless of how I’ll ultimately feel about the book, its presence in the final rounds is damned impressive.

And on that note, I’m out. I have the strong urge to curl up in bed with a book. Or play video games. Or write. Yeah, I should be trying that, too.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

“Every pro writer knows a better writer who started out at the same time but you’ve never heard of them. Why? Because they gave up when things got hard. And you know what? Fuck ‘em. They didn’t have the guts to stick it out. If you want to be professional writer, get yourself a truck-full of guts and a shot glass of ego and maybe you’ll make it. You’re not dead until you decide you’re dead.”

– Richard Kadrey

I have enough work to do as a writer right now to fill a full-time job and then some. If only the pay were comparable to the workload. Things are going well for me, so I shouldn’t complain. My mind races a hundred-miles-a-minute, just thinking about all of the possibilities.

One of my next steps is to work as a publisher. Not just a self-publisher. There’s one project that’s been in the works for some time now that will kind of kick this off.

There are so many great writers in the world, but not all of them are publishers or designers. I don’t know if I’m lucky, or if I work harder, or if I just happen to have the right sets of interests that make it possible for me to create books and ebooks, from the writing to the design to the production. I’ve already proven that I can be a one-man book producer. Now I want to help others.

The other day, I learned about Bloody Pulp Books, Steven Niles’ publishing collaboration with graphic designer Alex Lodermeier:

Niles is probably best known for creating 30 Days of Night, the vampire comic, but he’s written an impressive collection of horror comics. One of his creations, Cal McDonald, a supernatural investigator, lives in both comics and prose stories, and one of Bloody Pulp Books missions is to release some of Niles’ prose stories in handsome editions.

I love this idea of creators releasing their own work, and doing the labor involved in making sure that it’s an attractive release, something more than just words on a page. Something worth having. I’ve talked about Amanda Palmer before; she’s another artist who is taking things into her own hands.

Chuck Wendig has another ebook of writing advice out. I’ve talked about Wendig before, and I continue to enjoy his writing, his books and advice, and his sense of humor. Aside from his recent post about believing in ghosts, Wendig has a no-nonsense approach to writing (and other things) and his blog and books are always worth a look. 500 Ways to Be a Better Writer is currently only 99 cents, but will go up to 2.99 in a few days.

Damn. Writing that last bit reminded me of a former quote of Wendig’s that just clarified some things for me.

Micro-pub. Yeah.

Stay hard.

As it’s Halloween and all, I thought I’d give you guys an excerpt of “The Howling in Dunwich Hall.” This scene emphasizes the creepy, but don’t doubt for a minute that the story isn’t filled with the sexy, too.

It was definitely hoodie weather at Washington University. I kept my hands tucked in my pockets as we walked. London zipped up his leather jacket. My skin pimpled when the cool wind picked up. The wind whistled through empty tree branches. It reminded me of Halloween. Fall always did. Back before my parents died, they used to take me out each year. Halloween was the closest we got to a real family holiday.

As we walked, London kept up the vigilant and/or paranoid behavior of watching all around us. He often looked into the park but more than once I caught him looking behind us, like someone might be following us.

“Am I boring you?” I asked.

“What? No.”

We cleared the stretch of businesses and restaurants. There was a dark stretch of street between the shops and the dorms ahead. We’d left the bustle of students and locals behind us.

On our left, across from the park, were large houses that sat back far from the streets. Lines of wrought-iron fences separated the public sidewalk from private property.
Beyond the pockets of light from the street lamps was only darkness, sometimes punctuated by glowing windows.

“You just keep looking around, like you’re looking for someone.”

“Sorry, I—” London glanced over his shoulder.

“Like that.”

“It’s just… something feels wrong. Do you feel it?” The wind picked up as he said that.

“What did you mean ‘weird shit’ happens to you all the time?” I asked.

“I think you’re about to find out.”

This is where I would have considered whether or not I’d made the right move, letting this relative stranger walk me home down a dark, lonely street but I didn’t have the chance.

The sidewalk groaned beneath us. It reminded me of the sound that rattled through the pipes in my dorm the night that Brian and I were attacked by tentacles in the toilet, only louder. The asphalt vibrated beneath my feet. I reached out and grabbed London’s arm, either for stabilization or comfort. The ground continued to shudder.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Something big. We should move.” London started walking faster and I followed, never letting go of his arm. We cut into the street, away from the park. Leaves rained down from above, shaken loose from their trees by the vibrations in the ground. Along with the groaning, the park echoed with the sounds of creaking branches and blowing leaves.

London locked his arm against mine and started running. “Come on.”

I’m an asshole. London isn’t the one who’d been attacked by a tentacle monster, I was. Now something was happening again, and I’d put him in danger.

“There’s something I should tell you,” I said. “The thing with the toilet—”

The manhole cover directly ahead of us popped out of the ground like a discarded beer cap, spinning through the air before crashing down onto the street, cracking the asphalt. London skidded to a halt and I almost fell beside him.

“Motherfuck!” London said.

Less than two feet separated us from the open manhole. The cover continued to dance on the ground like a coin, losing momentum but still wobbling in a circle. From the darkness of the sewers, something stirred, just barely visible in the black, inky well.

It wasn’t until the first tentacle peeked out and slid across the asphalt that I really believed it was happening again.

“Hell,” London said.

“We should go. We should be going now.” I tugged at London’s arm. His muscles felt impossibly tight, impossibly hard beneath his leather jacket. London inhaled deeply, his nostrils flaring. He exhaled quickly and then inhaled again in short, staccato bursts, like he had done back at the pub. Like he was sniffing the air.

“This is bad.” London looked at me.

And, as an extra little bonus, a snippet of the sex scene is tucked below the cut:

Read the rest of this entry »

In a naked appeal for my dollars, Flaunt Magazine has covered their latest issue with James Franco’s butt¹:

I just returned from Kansas City. It was a work detour that came out of nowhere. I’m eager to write again. I didn’t have any time to write while I was there. We checked out the wonderful vegan options in town, and bounced around bookstores and comic book stores. I brought home a stack of new books. At one of the comic shops, writer Jason Aaron was just standing around, hanging out. He writes one of my favorite comics, Scalped.

Tuesday night, the waitress at Waldo Pizza recommended the most wonderful double-IPA but now I’ve forgotten what it was called. Waldo Pizza has a vegan menu and incredibly nice, awesome waitstaff.

We got muffins and scones and coffee at Mud Pie, a vegan coffeehouse. We ate Chinese food at The Blue Koi, a restaurant staffed by cute Kansas City hipsters.

St. Louis has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to feeding vegans.

While I was in Kansas City, I read a novella by Robert McCammon, The Room at the Bottom of the Stairs. It’s collected in a soon-to-be-released collection, The Hunter from the Woods from Subterranean Press.

The Room at the Bottom of the Stairs tells the story of Michael Gallatin, a British spy who’s tasked with infiltrating Berlin during World War II in order to distract Franziska Luxe, a German journalist, from her mission of exposing traitors within the Third Reich. Gallatin finds himself drawn to Luxe despite her role as a Nazi, and soon the two are caught up in a whirlwind romance. The book deals with the moral and emotional complexity of a damaged man who finds himself enraptured by an (un)questionably evil woman.

I came to McCammon’s work via another book, The Five, but I found that book to be hard to penetrate. While reading about McCammon, and reading his blog (I virtually always research writers and read interviews with them as I read their books.

The Room… caught me off guard. McCammon’s an incredibly talented writer, and the story of Gallatin and Luxe broke my heart; it’s erotic, exciting, and fraught with danger. McCammon beautifully twists between scenes of subterfuge, action, sex and romance in a way that made me care deeply for the characters, and made me want to strive to be a better writer. His language is clear and simple but manages to evoke a dramatic range of emotions and sensations and he presents a poetic view of Berlin as a war-torn city filled with debutantes who will continue the party at any cost. It’s in this backdrop that Gallatin and Luxe can continue their charade as though nothing is wrong between them, between their respective countries and ideologies.

The twist (not a plot twist, or a spoiler) is that Gallatin is a werewolf. He’s the star of McCammon’s earlier novel, The Wolf’s Hour.

That McCammon pulls all of this off in a story about a werewolf fighting Nazis is nothing short of astounding. Even if nothing interests you less than the topic of a werewolf fighting Nazis, I urge you to check it out.

The novella is available as a free download directly from Subterranean Press (scroll down to the bottom of the book description.)

The above illustrations are by Vincent Chong.

1: Noting of course that this may not, in fact, be Franco’s butt. Flaunt and Franco could very well be pulling one over on us all.

It’s almost Halloween and I’m proud to release my follow-up to “The Horror in Dunwich Hall:”

It’s available directly from me, at Amazon.com, and at BarnesandNobles.com!

After the terrifying events of “The Horror in Dunwich Hall,” Christopher King is looking forward to life returning to normal. When a strange but beautiful man introduces himself to King, it quickly becomes clear that nothing will ever be the same again. “The Howling in Dunwich Hall” kicks off a series of events that finds King facing dangers unlike anything he’s ever seen and lands him squarely in the middle of a supernatural war, and into the arms of a werewolf! Balancing horror and eroticism, Best Gay Erotica 2011 contributor Johnny Murdoc presents a potent mix of sex and scares!

Those of you who follow me on Facebook have noticed that I’ve been working on this story a lot recently. It’s not my usual type of fiction, and it required that I stretch some writing muscles that I haven’t used in awhile. I hope you guys enjoy reading it, and I hope you enjoy the continuing Christopher King stories. It’s a world I’m looking forward to expanding, and I’m having a lot of fun working on serialized fiction.

I’d like to give another shout-out to Marlen Boro, who provided me with the top of the two photos used in the cover (the second courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife department, thank you very much public domain).