Special Guest Angel Martinez

Please welcome, friend, CP and fellow Red Rose Publishing author, Angel Martinez. Angel and I met through an on-line crit group and she's introduced me to a whole new world of romance. Male / Male romance written by women for women. And I have to say... Whoa Nelly! So please sit back, open your mind and your heart and say hello to Angel.

Tell us about your new book out now:

Gladly. Finn releases at Red Rose Publishing July 2, 2009 - a story about a pooka lost in the modern world. What’s a pooka? You’ll have to read the story. But I will tell you he’s a very sexy, handsome one.

A little blub and a short excerpt to whet your appetite:

When Diego rescues a naked man from the rail of the Brooklyn Bridge, he just wants to get the poor man out of traffic and over to social services. He gets more than he bargained for when Finn turns out to be an ailing pooka, poisoned by the pollution of the city. To help him recover, Diego takes him north to New Brunswick where Finn inadvertently wakes an ancient, evil spirit, the wendigo.

While Diego and Finn struggle to find a way to destroy the wendigo before it can possess Diego or kill nearby innocents, Diego wrestles with his growing passion for Finn. Can they succeed in destroying the monster and in navigating a relationship between a modern man and a centuries-old fairy?

Excerpt:

The figure crouched on the bridge shocked Diego so thoroughly he drove a hundred yards before he realized what he had seen.

A man squatted on his heels on the rail, one hand on a cable, the other clutching a ragged blanket at his throat. Threadbare cloth flapped around bare ankles. The persistent wind yanked it this way and that to show flashes of naked legs.

“Holy shit,” Diego muttered, as he wrestled his ancient Toyota into the nearest side street to park. This was none of his business. Didn’t he have enough problems? Even as he argued with himself he ran, dodging traffic and ignoring angry epithets as he pelted back up the bridge against traffic. The inevitable gaper delay had slowed the flow at least, making his precarious journey easier.

People stared from the safety of their vehicles as they inched along, but no one stopped to help.

Diego ignored them. His primary concern was not to startle the man into falling. He slowed his approach, ready to offer soothing words, but the man heard his footsteps. Long black hair whipped and snaked in the wind, hiding his face, though Diego caught a glimpse of bared teeth.

“Did you come after me?” the jumper snarled. “I won’t go back.”

“Go back where?” Diego seized the opportunity to start the man talking.

The jumper shook his head to clear the hair from his eyes and peered at Diego with black eyes – not dark brown, but black, set in deep, shadowed sockets. “No, I suppose you don’t look like one of those,” he said in a softly accented, weary voice.

“One of who?” Diego edged closer to stand next to him.

“The ones who shut me in the iron cage. I changed. I escaped.” His words seemed to stick in his throat and even above the traffic, Diego heard him swallow hard. “But now I’m too tired. I can’t...and the river is so filthy. I think it might kill me.”

At least he doesn’t sound like he wants to die. “Look, if you don’t want the police catching up to you, or the hospital staff, or whoever it is, this is about the worst thing you could do. You’re upsetting all these people and attracting a lot of attention. They’ll be here any minute.” Diego reached out a hand, palm up. “Please come down. Let’s get you safe and out of the wind. Then we’ll see about straightening all this out.”

The man regarded him through the shifting curtain of hair for a long moment. “What are you called?”

Depends who you talk to. “My name is Diego. Diego Sandoval.” He lurched forward, his stomach plummeting to his feet, when the man swayed, but the jumper retained his place on the rail.

The man repeated his name a few times as if trying it out, and then nodded. “It’s a good name. Pleasurable to say.”

“And you?”

“I am called Fionnachd.”

Diego tried to repeat it and won a hint of a smile from the man when he mangled the pronunciation. “Could I call you Finn?”

That got a shrug. The blanket fell back from his shoulder to reveal all-too-prominent bones. “You could. Some have. I don’t mind.”

“Climb down, Finn,” Diego urged again. “I’ll help you. Let’s get you somewhere quiet where you can rest.”

Finn took his fingers in a light grip and Diego caught a whiff of rotten orange rinds as he slid from the rail.

What the hell am I doing? He could have Hepatitis or HIV or tuberculosis, or worse. He’s probably crazy. Maybe even dangerous.

The intense plea in those black-on-black eyes silenced his practical objections. Lost and alone, this man needed someone. Diego had never been good at walking away.
　



Okay, you know I'm gonna ask why... Why Male / Male romance? I know this is one of the first questions I had for you and I'm sure others want to know and are afraid to ask. I, however, am not afraid and can never be considered shy. LOL Why, Angel? What prompted you to weave worlds of love featuring two men?

Three reasons. I started writing male/male fiction as both an experiment as a writer and as a reaction to the social environment of the time. I found I enjoyed writing for males and there is something at once so fierce and so tender about male/male relationships which I find endlessly fascinating. It certainly doesn’t hurt that there’s an ever-growing market out there for GLBT fiction as well.

I ask this in all my interviews but for you I imagine you're asked all the time. How do you respond when someone says... "Oh, you write THAT kind of book?"

You know, I’d honestly been quite fearful when I began writing erotic fiction that there would be a lot of censure and hostility over it. Here I am, a wife and mom with a regular 40-hour a week job - what would people think? Funny thing is, I’ve had more people wrinkle their noses when I tell them I write Science Fiction than they have over the erotic work. The girls at work all want to know when the exciting ‘smut’ book is coming out.

I think the genre’s assimilation into the mainstream has really escalated over the past couple of years as the variety and popularity of erotica grows.

What are your goals as a writer?

To keep the voices in my head from making me bonkers. Seriously, I write because I must, because if I don’t, the stories have nowhere to go and we all know that’s not a good thing. I’ve always told stories, since I was very small, and I think every society has folks like me, the folks who stand up at the fireside and hold back the dark in the dead of winter by weaving tales. I write to entertain, sometimes to inspire, to get people to think about something new. My short terms goals involve getting everything out there to share with as many people as possible. Long term, the sky’s the limit.

How many books do you read a month?

Four or five, usually. I do love to read and, as Catherine knows, I don’t simply read, I devour books.

Do you have anything new in the works?

Oh, there’s all sorts of fun stuff coming down the pike. Lioness on the Knife - a collection of eight stories about women in power, has just been contracted with Red Rose. I also have a series of seven SF novels under my given name, Sandra Stixrude, which I’m hoping they’ll pick up soon as well.

Where can we find you?

Several places:
My website: Angel Martinez - Erotic Fiction for the Hungry Mind
Facebook
On Yahoo: ravenesperanza@yahoo.com
And on Goodreads: Angel Martinez

Where can we find your books?

Exclusively at:
Red Rose Publishing

Thanks for stopping by today, Angel.

And for all of you readers out there who have never considered reading Male / Male romance, I encourage you to check out Finn. Especially if you love Science Fiction and paranormal romance. I loved this story and can't say enough about it. I know I'm a little bias, but I truly think anyone who loves romance would swallow this story in one sitting.