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Subtle Blood is out!

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After much agonising, indecision, rewriting, and, frankly, fannying around (see last post) I am pleased to report that Subtle Blood is out. At last.

This is the final part of the Will Darling Adventures trilogy, which really does need to be read in order as otherwise it won’t make nearly so much sense. (Words are often like that. 😛 ) It’s a historical romance/Golden Age pulp mashup, with cocktails, conspiracies, flappers, and fast cars, plus a pair of men trying to make head or tail of the plots, the world, and themselves.

The three Will Darling adventures covers
(Gorgeous covers by Tiferet Design)

Reading order:

#1 Slippery Creatures

Soldier/bookseller Will meets lowlife aristocrat Kim Secretan.

#2 The Sugared Game

You thought Kim was a disaster area in the last book? Oh boy.

#2.5 To Trust Man On His Oath

Short story showing a turning point, available through my newsletter.

#3) Subtle Blood

Crunch time for Will and Kim as a lot of chickens come home to roost, some of them homicidal.

The reviews are in…

Subtle Blood is one of the best books that KJ Charles has ever written. Every word, every twisting twist of the plot, every interaction between its characters, it has been magnificent. (Book Me Up!)

A sexy, elegant and romantic murder mystery. … The romance between the two men shows that there are always new layers of love and understanding to uncover in one’s partner — and that happy ever after can be a work in progress. (Maya Rodale, NPR)

This was the perfect way to end this series. Lots of lovely declarations, a wonderful mystery, Will reaching his bullshit limit and letting it be known HE HAS HAD ENOUGH, Kim interrogating people with intensity, MORE DECLARATIONS OF DEVOTION, the bad guys getting their comeuppance, and then a wonderful ending. Okay, okay, also some super hot, ‘I’ve got to have you right now’ sex scenes. (Smexy Books)

KJ’s storytelling is like if you took your favorite pulpy detective stuff and gave it much more class consciousness, hot sex scenes, and also made it about queers, so A+++. (May Peterson, author of The Sacred Dark trilogy)

Subtle Blood buy links

Gumroad (mobi/epub downloads)

Goodreads

Twentieth Novel Bonanza

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I’m in the throes of prepping for the release of Slippery Creatures, book 1 of my new 1920s pulp adventure/romance series, and I realised something startling.

Cover of Slippery Creatures. Two men, one in evening dress with a book, one in casual clothes with a knife. 1920s style

This will be my twentieth novel. Twentieth. (26th book if you count novellas/novelettes, but then you have to think about short stories and look I’m trying to homeschool my son and he’s doing algebra, take the numbers away.)

The Magpie Lord published on 3rd September 2013, so not quite seven years ago, since when I’ve become a full time writer, and published about 3.5 books a year. I didn’t see this coming when Samhain accepted my ‘didn’t entirely mean to write this whatever-it-is paranormal historical Gothic Victorian m/m romance’.

(BTW if that sounds good, The Magpie Lord is free in e on all platforms as a pandemic bonus giveaway. Grab it at your preferred store or in epub/mobi for Kindle at Gumroad.)

I quit my publishing job in summer 2014 to try writing full time. This is generally not recommended, but in fairness I hated the job. At my leaving do, the uberboss asked me what I was going to do, and when I said be a full time writer, she laughed and said “Good luck with that.” Let us take a moment to note that the senior exec of a major publisher laughed at the idea of someone making a living off writing. This is a valuable lesson for an authorial career.

Notwithstanding, it seems to have worked out because it’s somehow 2020 (not so much ‘the year of our Lord’ as ‘the year of oh my God’) and my 20th novel. Gosh. Even more satisfyingly, my twentieth novel is…a Twenties novel. I swear I didn’t plan that.

(Slippery Creatures btw is the story of Will Darling, a Great War veteran turned bookseller, and Kim Secretan, a disgraced aristocrat, dubious character, and one-man game of Fuck Marry Kill. There are conspiracies, cocktails, flappers, plots, and all the fun of the Roaring Twenties. Out 13th May. Check it out.)

So! I’m going to do a Twentieth Novel Bonanza giveaway. In an ideal world that would be any of my books but I want it to be available on all platforms and all countries, so that means it’s my self-published books only. Which is 14 plus the aforesaid novellas/novelettes, so still not too shabby.

Rules

Twenty winners will be picked at random, and each winner can pick two books from my self pubs, in epub or mob format. (Important: Your email will be used only for this giveaway and I will not contact you unless you win. I will not sign you up to my newsletter or any such annoyance. However, if you actively want to sign up to my newsletter, feel free.)

legal bumph: The competition offers 20 winners each two free ebooks from my self-published books. No alternative prizes. Over 18s only. No purchase necessary. Just fill in your email to enter. One entry per person, duplicates will be discarded.

EDIT: competition is closed

If you want to check out the books available, here you go:

Charm of Magpies world

Lilywhite Boys

Green Men world

England world

Standalone

Will Darling Adventures

NB, if you are new to my work, a) hello and b) you may wish to check out the content warnings here for both general and specific warnings.

Happy entering and good luck!

IMPORTANT MESSAGE

All my blog posts, seven years worth, disappeared yesterday due to ?weasels? idk. I didn’t have a back-up because, although I had paid GoDaddy for a back-up package, they had not, in fact, backed anything up. Another useful lesson there. Alexis Hall, who is a tech genius as well as a quite amazing author, stepped in to save me and retrieve my work, preventing me from having a quite spectacular meltdown. Thank you. <3

If you too would like Alexis to make you feel better, I strongly suggest hitting preorder on Boyfriend Material, his forthcoming romcom, which is just gorgeous. It made me cry laughing, proper-cry, swoon, and stay up til 2am reading just one more chapter because it was too feelgood and engaging to stop. It might not fix your borked website, but it’s otherwise perfect.