Best Sellers and A Contest

A little late, but here is the best seller list from September for Amber Quill 

AMBER ALLURE / September 2012

1. Pushing The Envelope XIII: Dear Sir - Kim Dare (Gay / Contemp. / BDSM)
2. Digging For Gold - Sean Michael (Gay / Contemporary)
3. Maybe This Time - Shawn Lane (Gay / Contemporary)
4. Angels On The Outfield - Pepper Espinoza (Gay / Contemporary)
5. Tame 2: Savage - A. J. Llewellyn (Gay / Werewolf)
6. Down Memory Lane - Heidi Champa (Gay / Contemporary)
7. Run To Ground - Darcy Abriel (Gay / Werewolf)
8. Pushing The Envelope XII: Yours Faithfully - Kim Dare (Gay / Contemp. / BDSM)
9. The Friendly Werewolf & The (Almost) Virgin Vampire - Helen Louise Caroll (Gay / Werewolf / Vampire)
10. Happy Endings: Briefs - Missy Welsh (Gay / Collection)

For those wondering, and I know there were some of you, Maybe This Time has made it to Amazon.

Now, I don't have a release this month, but wanted to do something. I'm currently working on the next His story, Gratefully His. So, this month I am giving away to one lucky winner all of the first six His stories. That's Accidentally His, Becoming His, Can't Be His, Devotedly His, Eternally His, and Finally His. These are standalone stories and can be read in any order as they aren't related. I have all formats.

To get the chance to win, email me your name and format choice at authorshawnlane@gmail.com.
The contest will run through October 28, 2012

Maybe This Time Has Been Released

Maybe This Time has been released.

The Writing Vacation

So I’m on a writing vacation as I stated in a previous post. I am shortly going on a real vacation and another mini one in late September so the writing vacation extends to October 01.


How goes the writing hiatus? Well, to be honest I wrote a short story after my hiatus began. It’s called Loving the Boss and I sold it to Evernight Publishing for their Romance on the Go line. No the “Boss” isn’t Bruce Springsteen. It didn’t take up too much of my time to write and I had the idea and didn’t want to forget it. I have plans when the hiatus ends to write a story about a secondary character from Loving the Boss, too.


But now, I am officially writing free. I’ve been reading other people’s books. It’s funny how when you are a reader only you can completely enjoy a favorite author’s books without a critical eye. But when you are also a published writer yourself little things annoy you. Like one of my favorites in Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick/Jayne Castle. They are comfort reads for me. I always know I will be entertained by them. But there’s something she does in every book that now annoys me. “He thought” and “she thought” constantly pepper her books even though they are totally unnecessary in every context she uses them. I’m fairly certain as famous as she is she has complete control over her books and how much editing is done but that should be cut because it is really becoming distracting.



Besides reading, I have also been playing silly time management games on my computer. Silly thinks like how fast can you serve burgers before people get mad, that sort of thing. They amuse me. And very old Sega Genesis Role Playing games which I was able to buy as downloads from Amazon for like $2. Total nostalgia. And of course watching TV in the background while doing all this.


Anyway, I think my contest for One More Time has a few more days at Stumbling Over Chaos and now there is a contest up for Maybe This Time, here. No I really am not obsessed with having “time” in my titles. I don’t really know how that happened, it just did. Heaven knows it’s hard enough coming up with titles for books.

Taking a Break

I have finished my fairytale Sleeping Beauty story, Waking the Prince, a month early. Go me! This is part of a group of MM fairytales with four other writers so I am not sure of the exact release date at this time.

I started this story, to be honest, a long time ago. Probably years ago,with a particular publisher in mind who was going to do a theme of fairytales. I never finished it and it languished on my hard drive. In all honesty I am not sure I would have ever finished it except that Amber Quill decided to do a fairytale pax and I remembered my Waking the Prince story and volunteered for it. I'm glad I did now because I really love Prince Roland and his warrior, Magnus.

Now with my having finished Waking the Prince and turned it in (release date to be determined later), that is the last of my stories that will release in 2012. And so begins my basically two month writing vacation. Yes, you read that right. From now until October 01, I am on a writing vacation.

Here's the thing. Though release-wise I am still down from other years I have been writing a lot. I worked on One More Time coming from Loose Id this month for the first part of the year. Then I saw the antho call from Evernight and decided to do a story for that, Getting Wade. Then I saw the submission call from MLR Press for a Christmas story. I'd been wanting to submit there for a while and that seemed the perfect opportunity, so I wrote There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays. Then I remembered I really needed to write Leo's story in the Sutter's Bay series and so I wrote Finding Forever. And then out of the blue I decided to write Maybe This Time.

I've been writing, writing, writing, and my brain is tired. It needs a recharge. Which is hard for me. Because I have other stories I need to write, including more Sutter's Bay stories, maybe more His stories, definitely a trilogy, my cop story, and other stories that come to me all the time. I can't turn them off. And I can't really say I won't write anything during those two months, but I'm going to do my best not to get crazy.

I have a couple of real vacations in that time and so the timing is perfect for me to relax. I plan to read, watch movies, play in paradise, play in sin city, play some role playing video games (used to love these but don’t have much time these days), just all kinds of lovely things. I am greatly looking forward to not feeling like I just have to have something done. I deserve this break.

When October 01 arrives I will begin work on my planned trilogy in earnest as well as something else I have in the back of my constantly spinning mind. Anything written from October on will of course be released sometime in 2013.

This has been a very interesting year for me writing wise. While I’m still writing and producing work for Amber Quill I also expanded to include being published with Loose Id, MLR Press, and Evernight Publishing. Since I no longer publish with EC, Silver or DSP, I felt the need to branch out rather than have all my stories with one publisher. I look forward to a happy relationship with all my publishers in 2013.

I'll be checking in here of course as needed for information and releases and contests, etc.

Maybe This Time Cover

And here is my fabulous torso cover for Maybe This Time coming early September from Amber Allure

Update Time

I've been doing plenty of writing lately and I am happy to advise that I have another story coming from Amber Allure. This one is called Maybe This Time and is due to be released September 23, 2012. I am now back to working on my fairytale, Waking the Prince, and I am expecting that will be out either October or November. I'll advise on that once I know.

And speaking of Ambure Allure, for the first time in its history they are opening up for general submissions. The information can be found here, Amber Allure Submissions. As someone who has been with them since 2008 I can tell you they are a great publisher. So if you are a new MM author or one looking to expand your publishers, check them out. I can also tell you that I have seen the test version of the new website and it promises to be really cool when it goes live.

And finally, shortly Stumbling Over Chaos will be hosting a giveaway for Finding Forever, Sutter's Bay #4, but I will post here when the contest is up.