I pretty much just found this out, but thanks to USPS tracking I know my contract is delivered, so that seems official to me. My next book. It's a thing.

It is not the usual superpowered love*, though I guess depending on your definition, there are... sorta superpowers in it. It's called By the River, and it's part of a project I've been working on for a while now, all about elementals. There's more info on the overarching project at the Elementals page, but for the new book's unofficial blurb and some pretty pretty Astro art, you can check out the By the River page directly. Also, I did mention this one last month in my WiP Wednesday series, so if you want a sneak peek at some woefully unedited bits, you can find the old post here. But there will be proper excerpts once we get cracking.

I'm really excited about this one for a lot of reasons. So excited I'm not actually making a lot of sense, so I'm just going to make a list in an attempt to organize my scattered brainspasms on the subject.

1. Yay, new project! My love of writing fae-type things is well known to my friends or those familiar with  KV Taylor, but between this and the Fairy Compacts stuff coming up this summer, my fae-love is exploding everywhere. (Hey, it's messy, but... we have glitter?)

2. Yay, swimmer MC! Another thing I've done loads of before, but not as Katey Hawthorne. I was a swimmer from the ages of 7-18--my single tiny athletic accomplishment in life is that I lettered all four years and was team captain in high school. No, I am not a natural athlete, but I do love me some sports, and it's the one nearest and dearest my heart. And just in time for some sweet, sweet summer Olympics action. Woo.

3. Yay, hometown! So yeah, my small town West Virginia tendencies are well known in any guise, but this one actually takes place in a re-named version of my hometown. Geographically, hell, even emotionally, Ashton = Wellsburg. River rats, reprazent.

*More of that soon, promise!

Just a quick reminder that this is the last 24 hours for the little For Raven fundraiser. I say little, but it's gotten quite a bit larger than expected thanks to you beautiful people. Nights that were formerly sleepless (due to both worry and, you know, pain) have already been eased, and now we can bring it home. A little extra breathing room, since the immediate crisis was so quickly averted.

The campaign is here. The list of prizes for our two drawings, one for eBooks and one for print books, is remarkable.

I'm also offering free special editions of books 2 and 3 in the Fairy Compacts novelette series to contributors. Book 1, The Dangers of Fairy Compacts, will be available totally for free, first via the Goodreads m/m group's Love is Always Write event, then as an eBook sometime in June. I'm already in talks with a fabulous artist to do covers for all three, but the special edition will also have interior illustrations.

Regular eBook editions sans illustration will be available later, but only contributors get the special edition. And the SE is gonna be hot, man, because this artist... Okay, I'll wait 'til we have the details sorted to tell you. But seriously. Rad.

Thanks to everyone who's signal boosted again. I'll be back with a full report when the dust clears, but I just want to say that this kind of thing really restores faith in humanity, that people have been so generous and compassionate. <3

Yesterday was Avengers Day. Initially we had planned to do both Iron Man movies, Thor, and Captain America--because apparently The Hulk was bad. I didn't see either of them because I heard I would cry, but it's cool. Unfortunately when I went out shopping the other day I bought George Harrison: Living in the Material World on impulse. Fun fact: if you put George Harrison on the cover of something, I'll probably buy it--I would've even if I hadn't already seen it on HBO and loved the hell out of it. Anyhow, that blew my Fun Budget for the whole month... totally forgetting that a.) I do not own Thor and b.) it is not streaming on Netflix. So no Thor either.

We did Iron Man 1 and Captain America as a pre-game (Iron Man 2 came after at like 4am. No lie.) Then, just in case the lines were murder, we got to the theater, got some good seats, and hunkered down to wait for like 2 hours for The Avengers.

Now, to preface this, my favorite Avengers, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, will never be in an Avengers movie because they're also mutants. And, uh, Magneto's kids. The Marvel movieverse X-Men timeline is already completely screwed up after only five movies (one of which was meh, two of which sucked, and two of which I actually like) that I sincerely doubt they'll ever try and work it into the Avengers timeline. I have come to terms with this. However, my third favorite Avenger is Hawkeye. He got a short uncredited cameo in Thor, but otherwise he's the new one to the franchise. So I was excited about that.

I was not excited about much else when it came to the makeup of the team. Iron Man, Cap, and Thor all had movies that I enjoyed, albeit to varying degrees, and I don't have a problem with any of 'em. I like Hulk, but they couldn't seem to get him right, so I was a bit meh there. I love Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, but otherwise, let's be serious, every other named character movie is white, which is creepy. And while I really like Black Widow as a character--seriously? One woman? One who had heretofore been present in a peripheral/support cast capacity and has no superpowers (therefore, will be much, much easier for the super-duper powered boys to upstage, if this plays out how I fear)? Really?

These are all things I had to accept before I set out to see this movie. Which genuinely looked awesome from the trailers. While I don't always like Joss Whedon's stuff, he can at least be relied upon to have an excellent sense of humor, and he is, above all things, a lover of comics. Plus, the casting is great. I can do this... I can do this...

Glad I did, because I really enjoyed it. I will keep this non-spoilery, so if you care, read on! Not sure what it says that it required so much mental prep and the company of a like-minded girlfriend to get me there, but hey, that worked out. I pretty much agree with the review on PornoKitsch--except I don't precisely agree about the Black Widow stuff.

In truth, I think the Black Widow and Hawkeye stuff was the best because it played with one of my favorite tropes in an admirably subtle way: that of the non-superhuman in the superhero role. I always loved Hawkeye for his smart mouth, but beneath that (if not very, since I wouldn't call Clint deep) is a vast sense of insecurity--a recent issue of Avenging Spider-Man touched on it, actually, if in an over-the-top-manner. As a non-superhuman in that situation, you have to be better. You have to be the best. Hawkeye can't miss. Both of the non-superhumans were put in seriously compromising positions and have shaky reactions to them after the fact. And then they get the fuck up and go kick some ass--though it's implied that the effects will be psychologically with them for some time, well, those two are just piling on the damage at this point. If they require some help from others, they give plenty, too. Hawkeye probably got the least amount of attention, but, uh, there's a reason for that. So it's okay.

Now, that said, the movie would've been improved greatly by the application of another woman hero, one on par powers-wise with Thor or Cap, to contrast and commiserate with Natasha. There are so many options, it makes the head spin.

But everything you've heard about the Hulk being THE BEST AVENGER is pretty much true because holy god. Mark Ruffallo needs his own Hulk movie yesterday. Loki was amazing. I've never been a huge fan of the Asgard stuff in Marvel, honestly, it always made me roll my eyes. But a soft spot for Loki has always been there, and wow. Just perfect, man, silly helmet and all. Cap was even more Cap than he was in his own movie in some ways; Tony was the Big Damn Hero, battered and emotional (seriously he almost cried at least twice) and badass; and Thor was--well, his bits mainly consisted of punching things and repeatedly trying to give Loki a much-needed hug, which is for the best.

Also, oh my god, the after-credits scenes. I can't even. Just. All the excitement.

So yeah. Though it was far from perfect, it was a really good time. I reckon I enjoyed myself immensely.

And now I should probably get back to work. Five hours is totally enough to go on. Sleep is for the weak.

This is a sort of housekeeping post, an addendum to the introduction in the bio/faq. I've met a lot of people since this whole Superpowered Love thing started not-quite-a-year ago, many of whom I now converse with regularly on twitter, tumblr, etc. And I realized that the other me, which shares all online accounts apart from main blogs, may be slightly confusing. As in "what the hell is Katey tweeting so much about zombies and fish for?" confusing.

Therefore, here's a little reintroduction.

As Katey Hawthorne I do this, all these things here at kateyhawthorne.com, which serves as both the Superpowered Love blog and a place for me to make information about my LGBTQ romance novels (three so far, loads more in the pipeline) available--plus talk about romance and comics and other vaguely related things with like-minded types. There are generally explosions and happy endings and lots of love in these books. But that's the me that's less confusing, from this point of view.

The other me is KV Taylor. This is the dark side, I reckon. As KV I write stuff best termed "dark fantasy", but it often shares the LGBTQ bent of my romance. (It also often at least has a romantic subplot--but the HEA is far from guaranteed.) I've had a large handful of horror and dark fantasy short fiction published over the years. Scripped, my first novel, is essentially a love story, but extremely dysfunctional and flat out creepy. It's kind of my thing. My second, Liam, is a vampire novel coming out late this year. But I'll talk more about that later, I'm sure, because I'm just gearing up for a site redesign and a final runthrough on my end--plus, I got my art. Eee!

I also edit as KV Taylor. I'm the query manager at Morrigan Books--which means I read and funnel novel submissions. As a writer, you can imagine how sympathetic I am about handling that kind of thing, but there is no better feeling than getting to tell someone yes. A book I co-edited for them with Amanda Pillar, Ishtar, is doing really well with the awards ballots this spring, and I'm very proud of it. I'm working on co-editing with Carrie Cuinn of Dagan Books an upcoming spec fic anthology called Fish. It's going to be beautiful. I feel really honored to work with such fabulous authors and passionate publishers.

I run a free-to-read, pulpy spec fic magazine called The Red Penny Papers. It's been going for a year and a half now, and gathering steam all the while. We publish short fiction quarterly and about three times a year do a web serial. After, we release all our fiction as (currently, limited-run) eBooks. I've never had so much fun in my life as I do collecting these gems from authors and recruiting artists to portray them for the covers. If I actually make a few bucks selling stories, RPP is where it all goes.

In June I run Fae Awareness Month. It is the best month.  Also, Yeats was a dirty fae propagandist, and people need to be warned. Obviously.

All of that is the bulk of me and who I am and what I do. For the other stuff, my books probably tell you everything. I like loud music, gin, tattoos, comics, movies, cable TV, sex, live music, guitars, vampires, swearing, obsessing, fairy tales, art history, whiskey, costume dramas, traveling, and all other manner of things that are terrible for you, but at least I'll go out happy. I live just outside Washington, DC with a very nice dude called Balaji and a mutant cat called Lucy. I'm a vegetarian bisexual atheist who enjoys the company of people who disagree with me utterly.

So now if you see me going on and on around twitter about these things, you know why. They may be of interest or not, but hey, housekeeping, right?

And now, back to squeeing over slashy pairings I never thought I'd be able to imagine without a shudder. Because yes, yes I DID just buy that issue of FF #17.