In 2014 I released a novella called Wild and Precious. It became my best-selling book by far. I’m not sure what about it struck a chord but it’s always been one of my favorite stories too. Shy Brent breaks out of his past and experiments with men. Cody is there to help him. But Brent’s boss Graham is the one Brent is hung up on. Because of reader interest in the character of Cody, I then wrote Cody’s story: There You Are. Cody is special to me because he is bisexual and has loved women and men equally. Cody’s love interest, Phineas, is a beautiful and grieving drag queen who comes back to life when Cody enters his life. They connect because of Cody’s nephew Sandy. Sandy is also bisexual and has run away from his abusive home. The third story, Sand-Man’s Family, shows Sandy’s journey back home to confront his family and to rekindle a romance with the boy he loved in high school, Jade.
These three separate novellas are only available in e-book. Dreamspinner has put them together into a paperback edition that releases on February 2.
Here’s an excerpt from Wild and Precious that features Cody who is about to meet Brent through a personal ad connection:
Cody sipped his tea and scanned Kramerbooks from his vantage point in the Afterwords Café, looking for anyone fitting the description Brent Granger had given him. Short, he’d said. Brown hair. Hazel eyes. Pretty nondescript, except for the part about wearing a plaid shirt. You didn’t see that many plaid shirt wearers in this part of DC. And then there was that thing in Brent’s e-mail about “making new friends.” That didn’t seem very gay to Cody. Damn Bette for making him put “friends” in his ad.
Bette and Aurora had laughed, Aurora telling him, “Just look for the bi-curious boy in plaid.”
Bette had added, “But if he’s wearing a baseball cap backwards or chewing tobacco, run.”
Cody fidgeted, hoping this wasn’t going to be a fiasco. They’d talked on the phone and Brent had sounded okay, his low voice laid back, even sexy, with a hint of a Southern accent. He’d seemed interesting, too: an aspiring writer, a book lover, a music reporter for Washington/Arts.
Cody was pulled out of his daydreaming by the sight of a short, brown-haired, stunning guy walking towards the cafe, gazing around uncertainly. All right! If this was Brent, he was hotter than Cody had ever dreamed he’d be, hot in an innocent, doesn’t-know-he’s-hot way. Plaid shirt!
This is gonna be fun, Cody thought, mentally rubbing his hands together.
*****
Happy Reading!
CJane
After years of hearing characters chatting away in her head, CJane Elliott finally decided to put them on paper and hasn’t looked back since. A psychotherapist by training, CJane enjoys writing sexy, passionate stories that also explore the human psyche. CJane has traveled all over North America for work and her characters are travelers, too, traveling down into their own depths to find what they need to get to the happy ending.
CJane is an ardent supporter of LGBTQ equality and is particularly fond of coming out stories.
CJane is the author of the award-winning Serpentine Series, New Adult contemporary novels set at the University of Virginia. Serpentine Walls was a 2014 Rainbow Awards finalist, Aidan’s Journey was a 2015 EPIC Awards finalist, and Sex, Love, and Videogames won first place in the New Adult category in the 2016 Swirl Awards and first place in Contemporary Fiction in the 2017 EPIC eBook Awards.