"Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables." -- Sappho

Hi! I'm Madeleine Urban, and this is my blog, where I post about my published m/m romantic fiction, my thrills and frustrations in writing, and...whatever else strikes my fancy. Comments and feedback welcome and appreciated; This sticky post lists all my published works. The blog is open to anyone to read. You don't have to have a LiveJournal account to leave a comment. Thanks! You can contact me at mrs.madeleine.urban [at] gmail [dot] com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Our gorgeous Warrior's Cross cover by Anne Cain is still in the running in the Rainbow Awards. You can vote for it here.

A very nice review from Romance Junkies for Warrior's Cross:

"This novel grabbed my interest from the very first sentence. The mystery surrounding Julian is captivating and every time a new clue about was revealed I found myself wanting to know more." Read the rest here.

Warrior's Cross is showing up in Best Book Polls and other awards sites. One I found out about because the group e-mailed me; the other I found out about through an authors list I'm on where someone posted about it. So these things are happening without me shopping it out there... to me that's a good thing.

Vote for Warrior's Cross (or your other favorite book, if it's listed) in the Dark Divas Book of the Month Poll

The Reviewers at Dark Diva Reviews get to choose their Top Picks for the month, and we thought it was only fair that YOU, the reader, also gets to choose your favorite book. The books that are included in the poll were rated 5 Delightful Divas, a Recommended Read, and/or a Top Pick.

Voting is open from Sunday, November 1 until Saturday, November 7 at midnight EST.

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The Romance Erotica Connection has a series of awards for voting. (Sorry, I don't know anything about the nomination process.)

Warrior's Cross is nominated in the Erotic GLBT book category.

My publisher, Dreamspinner Press is up for several awards, and some other Dreamspinner authors are too.

You can vote here.

I just want to thank everyone who reads our books. Really. It means a lot.



Summary: 570 Books of which 107 go to Phase 3, more or less 20%. Phase 1 and Phase 2 lasted 1 month, Phase 3 will last, more or less, 6 weeks. Due date for Phase 3: December 11. 64 Judges will read the books.

I want to thank everyone who voted for me and Abigail. We're pleased as Halloween punch that Cut & Run and Warrior's Cross stand out so much in the stack of mystery/thrillers out there.You can see the poll results here. The top contenders in each category now go to Phase 3.

I'm still a little confused, actually. I thought the polling was to cull down through the phases to sending for judging in Phase 3, but apparently there was also a "popularity contest." I'm guessing that's the top vote-getter in the polling in each category because that book gets an automatic pass to Phase 3. So I'm guessing that if Cut & Run had not been the top vote-getter, it would still have gone to Phase 3 because of the popularity. Maybe.



Cut & Run was a Jury's Choice for Mystery/Thriller Fiction. All these books go directly to Phase 3. Cut & Run was also named Mystery/Thriller Fiction Popularity Contest Winner.




Warrior's Cross came in 2nd place in the Mystery/Thriller Fiction Popularity Contest and gets an honorable mention. It was also listed as a "Jury's Favorite," which basically means (I think) it got enough votes to go to the judging stage, but only one book per author can go, and Cut & Run beat it out.

He's a best-selling author, well-connected about town, genius at creating and backtracking crimes, brilliant when it comes to creating mystery/suspense plots, beloved by millions of adoring readers, friends with the police and several other famous and brilliant writers, laid-back and witty, an inventive cook, a loving father, a ever-suffering son, and damn good-looking.

Well, you know, if I were a guy and all. And fictional.

*razzlefratz*

Abigail is intimately familiar with my shortcomings, as I am of hers, and as co-authors, we mesh really well when it comes to shoring each other up. I'm stronger on emotion, plucking heart strings, visualization, and description, she's stronger on plot, cackling evilness, light bulb ideas, and action. She's a good at "yes, we need that and here's why", and I'm a decent technical editor. But the one place I seem to fail most spectacularly is at what I call the "ripping" stage.

First of all, she and I are damn good writers in our own rights and together. So our first drafts are actually pretty good. But we know and have learned that we have to go back and pick them apart, not only to check for continuity and content, but also to see what needs keeping, what needs cutting, and what needs ripping. I can revise all day. I'm okay at rewriting, Abigail and I play off each other very well. It's the ripping that gets me, taking a scene that's already good and ripping it up in the quest to make it better. Taking pieces out and deleting sections because they just don't fit. It's painful, and frankly, Abigail is a hell of a lot better about it than I am. I think it's her obsession with weapons. (Hairspray! Oops. You don't know about that yet.) Although I came up with Zane's knives, so what does that say? Let me say, though, that not all scenes need ripping. There are scenes that we write and say, "HOT DAMN," and it's in the book. There's are also HOT DAMN scenes that get cut in entirety... and saved for use in another book. Yes, I'm taunting you. Bad me.

So I've been slowly learning to not be so attached to my writing. I'm still no good at it, but I'm trying. If I can take some time away from the work, a few days, a week, a couple weeks, it's much easier to go back and look at it and say, "God, that's utter shit" and strip it and rip it. I've even been able to see the usefulness of it. Sometimes we look at it and say, "That entire thread has to go, because it wouldn't happen that way." That tends to lead to more rewriting than ripping. The unfortunate side effect is that the process takes time.

Way back when, Abigail and I wrote Caught Running in a matter of weeks. Really. Warrior's Cross, in its first incarnation, was written in a couple weeks, pretty quickly after Caught Running, straight through beginning to end. We got some feedback and didn't feel like rewriting the story at the time, so we shelved the whole damn thing. Almost two years later we pulled it out, blew off the dust, and worked on the rewrites to make it what it is now. The two novellas, Under Contract and Over the Road, were each written in a couple of weeks tops very close to as is. Cut & Run took longer, but that was because we were enjoying it so much we didn't want to stop. (hee hee). We finally had to say, "Enough already, find a stopping point."

But then we had to decide what to keep, what to cut, and what to rip. And hell yeah, I wanted to run.

For all writers, and perhaps even more for writers who come from fandom backgrounds, the act of creation associated with writing is fun, entertaining, loving, even cathartic. You can just let go of preconceived notions about "what writing is/means/should be" and give the muse free rein. After all, it's just for fun, not for profit, and sometimes feedback can make you smile or make you cry. There are Big Name Fans who have been mainstays in their chosen fandoms, because No. 1: they are above average writers with lots of production over the years, and No. 2: they have been around for years and years, and just by way of longevity become the grand dames. But because you had no more invested in it than the fun of writing it, it just might be easier to shrug off the occasional caustic feedback.

Then you change gears into writing for publication. There are still minor entertaining obsessions and supportive circles and attacking trolls. There are still BNFs, only they're not associated with fandoms, they're associated with genre and publishing houses. It is a bigger world, one with reviewers who will shred you and reviewers who will praise you. There's more invested in your work, not only because you want people to like it, you want people to buy it.

Overall? I think there's very little "concrete" difference from fandom writing. It's just a matter of perspective, like the big fish in a fishbowl as opposed to a little fish in a lake.

I guess what I'm saying as I ramble is that the chasm between being an author for pure pleasure and being a author as your "job" isn't near the rift most people think it to be. For example:

Writing as Work --- Writing as Pleasure

creating a world --- choosing a fandom
research work --- fandom knowledge
MS preparation --- beta review
finding a publisher --- finding a group/mailing list/own blog
publication --- posting
reviewers --- feedback/comments
fans --- friends lists
RSS --- fandom group lists
web site --- blog
promotion --- crossposting
publishers --- archive sites/mailing lists
sales --- feedback
royalties --- feedback/awards
requests for more --- requests for more

It's an imprecise comparison, but one I think has some merit. There's no reason a fandom writer couldn't stretch wings and imagination to make the jump to professional publishing. It takes work. Sometimes more work than an author fresh off the press has, because a fandom author has to jettison baggage first. It takes hard work in some of those above instances, like finding a publisher. That can be miserable work and very daunting. The other side of the coin is that not only do you get feedback when you're published, you get paid too.

So my advice to fandom authors who want to be published? Try it. Don't shrug it off as too difficult or dangerous or scary. At the end of the day, it's not all that much more than you'd deal with in fandom if you're seriously into posting and fandom involvement.

Don't get me wrong--I am in no way saying that getting professionally published is easy. I'm just saying there are similarities. Again, it's all a matter of perspective.

I've seen a letter from Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign, about the hate crimes bill passing through Congress. President Obama has vowed to sign it by the end of this month. I hope he has the balls to do it. It will be setting a new precedent, one that needs to be set. There are other bills in Congress, one about workplace discrimination, another about military discrimination, and those are just as important.

When I worked at the newspaper in Owensboro, a reporter I worked with was in The Laramie Project, a stage play inspired by Matthew Shepard and his senseless murder. It had a serious impact on me. Owensboro was a very nice place to grow up, about 55,000 people, safe, a decent amount of things to do--but it was (is?) seriously white bread and conservative. The first contact I had with people I "realized" were gay was in college. A couple of them because some of my closest friend before they graduated and left.

But my parents somehow raised me to be remarkably open-minded, and after I got past the surprise of the initial idea, I've been as supportive as I could to my friends and others--whether GLBT or another race or handicapped--to me, every life is important, and it doesn't matter to me if someone is different. In fact, I celebrate those differences. Think of how boring life would be without them.

Visit loveconquershate.org.

I recently took a small part in a long discussion amongst authors on the topic How does your family feel? The answer have varied from wonderful to terrible, from joyous to despairing, and it's been a real eye-opener. Here was my post:

I will be the first to admit that I have been ridiculously lucky with my family and friends. My husband has known a long time that I write M/M, though it's not his thing. He did serve as a technical consultant for Cut & Run, as he is longtime military. I'll ask him, hey, would so-and-so be able to do such-and-such with this? And he'd say yes, and this is how it would work.

My Mama has known about my writing dating way back to my Star Trek fan fiction. Now she's bought every book and short story I've written, and some of my co-authors' books too. She prints out the pdfs of the short stories and keeps them in binders (she doesn't like reading off the computer screen). Cracks me up. She gives some standard feedback, and she's read a couple stories prior to submission.

My Poppy is thrilled that I'm being published, and although Mama said he'd said he was at least going to read the sci fi book, I don't know if he did. But he's so chuffed about it, it's hysterical. He introduces me as his "professionally published author daughter" to all and sundry, so of COURSE the next question is "Oh, what do you write?" He even announced it at large at my last family reunion. When my cousins and a couple aunts asked personally about topic matter, I took a leap of faith and said gay romance, and reactions went from "Oh really?" to "Okay," to "Not my thing, but okay", to "Hey, cool, what's your pen name?" I was very surprised.

My Granny, who just died beginning of August, lived with Mama and Poppy, and so of course she knew I was published. Mama told me once that Granny asked her what kind of books I wrote. Mama told her, it's not your thing, they have gay men and sex in them, but the books are very good," and Granny said, "That's very good then." She didn't even read het romances with sex in them, so the gay part wasn't even an issue.

My Mama has told a few of her friends, and they ask how it's going, though I don't know if they read. My brother laughed and said "Whatever" and my sister-in-law asked if I would give her one (I gave her Caught Running) and she said she really enjoyed it.

My close circle of fandom friends are indeed very supportive, and even my other friends, ones I used to run a sci fi convention with, didn't even blink at the content and some have bought my books. Of course, sci fi and fantasy has had GLBT themes forever and ever.

Most of my surprise is my own. Regardless of my books and how I "appear" online, I'm rather introverted and embarrass very easily in person. And just because I know people could react negatively, I don't talk about it until I know how they might react, and even then I'll just give the generic "romance" answer. I guess that kind of makes me a hypocrite, in that I support gay rights in every way, but I have a hard time telling people about my book content, which should be easy.

So, yes, I've been insanely lucky, and I only wish it could be like this for other authors in our field.

I wrote about 3,000 words yesterday in a frantic attempt to finish something that's on a serious deadline (No, it's not Sticks & Stones, sorry). I don't know what happened, but I wish I could maintain it. If I wrote 3,000 words a day, Monday through Friday, I could write a novel in a month. *hysterical laughter* Yeah. That'll happen. But I shall attempt to ride the wave and see if I can't drag Abigail along with me. Perhaps Nicki too. We'll see.

So, I've seen in my many years of fandom writing and my few years in published writing that awards events/organizations receive criticism for a variety of reasons, such as because the system is only a popular vote, because they're run by people who are not professionals, because authors take advantage of the process, etc. etc.

Yes, I've asked my readers (fans? Lord, what a concept!) to vote for my books in the Rainbow Awards and other competitions recently and many times in the past. Does that make me a bad person? I don't think so. I love my stories. A few other people do too. Lots of people like my stories. And some (or possibly a lot) don't like my stories. I've had to grapple with that and decide/struggle to move on. So of course I want my books to receive positive attention. I ask for votes if you as a reader liked the book. That doesn't mean someone won't go and vote for me because they like me as well as (of instead of) my book. Or perhaps they have read something else of mine in the past and liked it. Doesn't politics (local, state, national, world) work the same way?

That's the no-win, the Catch-22, the Kobayashi Maru (RHYME!).

I voted for Alex Beecroft's False Colors. I've only read about half of it so far. I know Alex on a M/M mailing list, and she seems like a lovely lady. Does that mean I shouldn't have voted for her because I haven't actually finished the book yet? I voted for Isabelle Rowan's book A Note in the Margin, which I have read (though it was pre-publishing), and I've encouraged other people to vote for it, because it's a damn good book. So if someone takes my word and votes, should that make that vote invalid?

I ran into this a lot in fan fiction as well. Popular awards are, well, popular, and I don't see anything wrong with that. I've been a judge before, and let me tell you, it's not easy. It's not quick. It's not always fun. It's work. So, a little respect for the people running the awards, please.

Who's to say what is "professional"? Are the Pulitzers or the Hugos or the Nebulas any different? They're compiled by popular vote and judged by regular people too. I've been involved in mainstream science fiction publishing/authors/conventions, and I've seen a lot of nasty controversy around the Nebulas many times.

In the end, I say that if you don't like it, as an author or a reader, there's nothing wrong</I. with not taking part. And you don't have to take crap from people about it. If you do like it, then enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with that either. At the very least, everyone's getting a great list of books to read!

I and my co-authors are second-round finalists in a couple categories over at the Rainbow Awards.



Yay! Vote for Cut & Run! We were first in the first-round visit.




Cut & Run, The One That Got Away, and Sutcliffe Cove are still candidates in the Contemporary category.

Turn your sound on for this. Read this first, then watch. This is almost unbelievable. This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort between the Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of Iowa. Amazingly, 97% of the machines components came from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of Bancroft, Iowa. Yes, farm equipment! It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up, alignment, calibration, and tuning before filming this video. The machine is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall at the University and is already slated to be donated to the Smithsonian.

Watch it here

(cross-posted from abigail_roux:)



This is a huge undertaking by elisa_rolle, and even though I have a few titles nominated, I would be posting this link regardless because it's a fun thing. And even if you don't vote for anyone, it's a great way to find some excellent fiction.

Cut & Run and Warrior's Cross have both been nominated, both in the same categories.




Click on the graphics to read more about The Rainbow Awards. You can still vote for us in the next round by clicking on the finalist buttons above.

Read the entire review

Review excerpt:
This is a longer story in page count (300 pages) yet moves swiftly and keeps your attention throughout. The strong characters and narrative carry the story and the enjoyable action plot make this a fun, entertaining read with a good romance. The actions scenes are interesting and engaging with good writing and a dash of wit and humor thrown in to keep the story from being too dark and tense.


And on the basis of that review, Warrior's Cross is up for BEST BOOK OF THE WEEK! - you can only vote on Saturday and Sunday -- so if you liked Warrior's Cross, go vote for me and Abigail here.

Wave at Reviews by Jessewave has compiled a post: Readers' Favourite Gay Books. As an author and a reader, I think it's a fabulous resource and a wonderful gathering of great authors.

Wave said: "As I said in the earlier post, this is not a Top 100 or a Top 200 list, it’s a list of favourite M/M books from you, supplemented by many of my favourites, as well as books that have been included as a result of exhaustive searches of booksellers’ sites to identify those that you would consider keepers."

I'm honored to be included on it. Caught Running and Cut & Run, both by me and Abigail, and The One That Got Away, by me and Rhianne, are on the list. There are also books by friends and fellow DSP writers on the list.

I'm not looking at this as a popularity contest. I think of it as a bunch of friends making recs. So if you're looking for something good to read, this popular books list would be a great place to start. I know I'll be looking at it.

Have you ever seen that poster "Happiness is a Warm Puppy"? It's so right. I have two dogs (not puppies, they're nine), and I love them so much. Watching them, I can see their definition of happy. It's so simple, and I benefit, too.

1. Mama or Dada's attention (scratches, play ball, run outside) - for which I get excited wriggles.
2. Sleep under the blanket with Mama or Dada - for which I get warm snuggles.
3. Watch out the window - for which I get quiet (snore-filled quiet, but quiet).
4. Eat/drink (especially Mama or Dada's food) - for which I get lots of excited kisses.
5. Doze in the sunshine twelve hours a day - for which I get loads of cute awww moments.

Sometimes I wish my life could be as simple as theirs.
I think I'll go hug and play now.

If you're visiting my blog, my slideshow of book covers is "temporarily disabled." LiveJournal has suspended all embedded content on LJ itself while they work on something, and they hope to have it back up ASAP. So I'm not being censored or anything like that. Thanks to Melissa for pointing it out to me.

...what do you do? I'm already working on my writing with Abigail and Rhianne, working on my near full-time real life job in technical writing, trying to read a little so my brain doesn't lock, keep the house tidy, cook real meals instead of eating out...why get a kickass story idea now?

I just don't know if I have the time. If I did, I would probably be working on my pirate novel (only the research, even to be a fun period piece rather than a full historical, is daunting time-wise as well). Should I outline it? Splat details into a doc? Try to start at the beginning and see what happens when I can only scrape together a half hour a week?

*sigh* This is the first tiny bit of creative inspiration on my own part, aside from the seriously strong love affair Abigail and I have with Ty and Zane.

*mutters*