Lovesick Titans by Amanda Meuwissen (VNBtM, guest post, excerpt, and GIVEAWAY) GFT ADULT title

I have the pleasure of sharing a guest post by author Amanda Meuwissen who answers my question...

What do you do to mentor others?

AM:  My mentoring of others for writing began with my work as Managing Editor for the indie publisher BigWorldNetwork. As much as I adore writing, I enjoy editing as well and helping people craft their work.

I helped edit over 60 novels and many more online series, and I consider the five years I spent with the publisher some of the most rewarding, both for how I advised other authors and my editing team.

The most important thing to me was to ensure that what we were editing never took away from the voice of the author but was more technical focused while also being conscientious of any plot/scene moments that weren’t coming across clearly. Readers don’t want cookie cutter voices from their authors, so everyone doesn’t need to be exactly the same in execution.

I also went out of my way to give feedback on those submissions we received that weren’t accepted, still providing edits, suggestions, and the opportunity for repeat submissions if authors went back, revised, and tried again. We even published a few who were initially rejected. Other publishers simply don’t do that.

I love telling aspiring writers to not compare themselves to other authors because we’re not competing with each other, readers always want more to consume, we only compete with ourselves, bettering ourselves and our writing. I think approaching publication that way helps a lot.

I’m also just a natural cheerleader who wants to see others succeed. Writers who are wary of putting their work out there? I’m here to tell you to believe in yourself and try, especially when it comes to some of the amazing fanfiction I’ve read over the years.

Most of my novels are adapted fanfic, and I like sharing that with readers and writers I engage with online to encourage them to consider how they might adapt their fanfiction to reach a broader audience. Often fanfics are better than the ‘best-selling’ novels out there. Most fanfic authors do so just in their spare time and never consider their work going beyond a website, but fanfiction is just as valid as any other writing and is one of the best tools for beginners to build their skills and craft their voice.

The other bit of advice I never stop giving is to write every day. National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriNo) was the kick in the pants I needed a few years ago to jumpstart my writing habits, and I’ve never looked back. With NaNo you HAVE to write every day, and the tendency stuck with me and only for my benefit.

So, I say—don’t give up. Take a chance. You can be a teenager or full-time accountant or middle-age mother of four, it doesn’t matter, you can still share your writing, and I aim to encourage as many people as possible to embrace that and share their stories.

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Lovesick Titans

by
 Amanda Meuwissen

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GENRE:   Gay Romance, Superhero

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BLURB:

Not even a Titan can always stand up to a God.

Malcom Cho is in over his head, wrapped up in a love affair with his superhero nemesis Zeus, who most people in Olympus City only know as Detective Danny Grant.

Lovesick Titans begins where Lovesick Gods left off, after a heist gone wrong that ended with a museum guard dead and Mal and Danny beaten and exhausted from their fight with the new threat in town, Cassidy Ludgate—Hades.

Unaware that Ludgate’s true motivation is revenge for the death of his father at Zeus’s hands, Mal wants only to keep Danny close, while Danny races to solve the cases surrounding Ludgate to stop him from whatever he has planned for them next.

What Mal doesn’t know is that Danny didn’t pursue him with the purest of intentions but sought to break his heart in retaliation for not being there when he needed him in the fight against Thanatos. Even though Danny no longer seeks that end, the lies between them loom like a shadow about to descend upon them both.

And Hades has only begun to toy with them…

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EXCERPT

Danny let Mal hold his hand in place on his arm, while his other hand strayed, drifting down to Mal’s hip and resting at the edge of one of his larger scars. Mal had many, from years of abuse and a hard way of living. Normally, when Danny touched one, he pushed on with confidence, but tonight, the raised scar tissue made him snap to his senses like he’d been in a trance.

“Sorry,” he said and pulled both hands away.

But Mal reached for them, hung onto them, and brought Danny’s hands back to his skin. “It’s okay. Broken bottle one night when Dad got drunk. Now I get to add another knife wound to the collection.” Mal smirked as he nodded at his bandaged arm.

Danny smiled with him, but it was a sad, shattered expression. He teased the tips of his fingers over the scar tissue. “Are all these really from…” With a startle, he tried to pull away again as if he’d said something he shouldn’t.

“My father?” Mal said, refusing to let him go. “Not all. Most though. Some are from prison. Some dumb mistakes. Fights like tonight. But most…yeah, they’re his.”

Taking Danny’s hand still resting on his hip, Mal drew it upwards, guiding it across his bare chest until he reached his shoulder and the faint circular scar tissue near his clavicle. 

“Freezer burn. From his powers. Because I broke my leg when I was eight and I cried. He wanted to teach me a lesson. Teach me how to keep pain in and never let anyone see it. So he held the tip of a frozen finger there until it burned.”

Danny’s brow furrowed with indignant anger. 

Mal trailed the hand lower to a particularly bad scar across his stomach—his worst and the one he remembered the clearest. “First knife wound. Caught me with a boy in my room. Would have killed him if I hadn’t stood in the way. I took the brunt of it. Let him run off. Never brought a boy home again, not ‘til Dad was gone. Brought a couple girls home,” he shrugged.

“Girls?” Danny asked with a touch of humored skepticism bleeding through his concern. He splayed his hand flat against Mal’s stomach, warm and intimate in his touch.

“Occasionally. Not as often.”

Danny nodded but his smile quickly faded, his eyes trained on the scar and the affectionate way he traced it with his fingers. “Sometimes…I think my dad hates me because…” he trailed and the motion of his hand slowed. “There’s something I never told you. About the night I killed Thanatos.”

The smile dropped from Mal’s lips as well as he waited for Danny to continue. 

“He killed my mom.”

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Amanda Meuwissen has been writing and posting online for many years, including maintaining the website and blog for the software company Outsell. She is an avid writer and consumer of fiction through film, prose, and video games, and is the author of the paranormal romance trilogy The Incubus Saga and young adult novel Life as a Teenage Vampire. Amanda lives in Minneapolis, MN, with her husband, John, and their two cats.

Author web links:

Amazon author page

Website

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Goodreads

Facebook

Twitter

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