At the beginning of the year I was kinda sorta intending to release four new novellas and one novel in 2025. It is now looking like three new novellas, one novelette, and one novel. Five new titles is pretty good considering … well, everything.
Out already is Novella 2025.1, OUR COMPLICATION, my M/M/M age-gap Hollywood story. The main characters are all new, but this story has quite a few links within both the existing story universe and the next novella.
We’re looking to launch Novella 2025.2 in April. It’s one of those projects that kind of surprised me, because I thought it would be one thing (a M/M novel) and it turned out to be something else (M/M/M/F novella). Three of the main characters have appeared before, two in supporting roles (Cory Perez - he’s on the page in BEAT and referred to in NO MORE WORDS; and Shaya Rubens - she’s on the page in A LITTLE TURN and referred to in GIVING IT UP and ONE ENCHANTED EVENING). The third, well, he’s all over the place.
That character is Jonathan Morris, a wrestler turned movie star who’s the headliner in my fictional action-comedy movie franchise starting with Countdown, which is Victor Garcia’s big break in EXPOSURE. That movie is also a big break for Manny Figueroa, one of the stars of INTO YOU. And it’s also a big break for JoJo Rhodes, one of the main characters in OUR COMPLICATION.
Anyway, Jonathan is badly injured when a stunt goes wrong on the last day of filming Countdown 4; that event appears in Andy & Victor Book 4, UNMASKED.
You see why I need a 25-page story-universe timeline and character chart, right?
So the novella coming out next month features Jonathan, plus Cory and Shaya, plus a new character. I’ll tell you about that guy in the official launch post.
After that, the next thing out will be this year’s full-length novel, which was prompted by my online friends Tammy & Emily, and which took a lot (a LOT) of research, because it’s about figure skating. And figure skating, dear reader, is not my sport. To the best of my recollection, I’ve only been on ice skates twice in my life. But all the research was a ton of fun, and I ended up doing so much of it, there may well be a second book in there somewhere. Our target for releasing the skating book is May.
After that, I have Novella 2025.3 to finish writing, and then the novelette, which is intended for this year’s JMS Books Advent Calendar promotion.
I have a few works-in-progress that keep getting pushed down the queue. Sometimes that means a story idea should be quietly abandoned, but for a while that’s what I thought about Jonathan’s story - and now I’m glad I let him simmer until the story matured, because I like it a lot. And I hope you will too.
Keep reading, my friends.