Anna Butler

Have you ever eaten pizza at a wedding?

Yeah, me neither. Not exactly the cuisine of choice when you’re dolled up in the big floofy dress or the tux. I mean, can you imagine trying to get the tomato and pepperoni stains out after you’ve fed each other a slice?

Remember all the fuss a few weeks ago in Indiana and the religious freedom bill? It appeared that if you have faith in the Lord, your imagination does indeed stretch to pizza weddings, and allows you enough creative thinking to preempt the floods of requests you’re going to get from every LGBT person in Indiana by announcing to the press that your religious convictions would prevent you from catering to gay weddings. It blew up all over FaceBook, remember? Huge backlash. Sadly, the most distressing part of this sordid tale is that the backlash included the pizza owner’s GoFundMe which has netted a million dollars.

A million dollars.

And yet Christianity is being persecuted. Honest, give me a million dollars and I’d almost be up for a bit of persecution myself. Except the people who are really being persecuted here, who are really suffering, don’t get offered a million dollars for their trouble.

Time to take a stand.

I am proud to say that more than 220 LGBT authors are doing just that. We’ve banded together to make a very simple offer: LGBT charities do so much good with vulnerable people who know the real meaning of alienation, persecution and desperation. Not for a religious choice, but for who they are. These charities need support. We want to do just that.

We’re holding a giveaway. We’re giving away copies of our books to those of you who give a donation to an LGBT charity of your choice. The giveaway is being hosted and managed at the Diverse Reader blog where you’ll find a short story by A.J. Rose which illustrates just what gay teenagers face, as well as the full rules which explain how you can enter to win a book.

Do go along to the blog and join in. Give a little to support real victims of persecution, and get something back in the way of a splendid book, for free.

You can even eat pizza while you read it.

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Available now from

Dreamspinner Press (ebook)

Dreamspinner Press (print)

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

All Romance ebooks

16 February 2015

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Yup. Two days before Gyrfalcon!  And so I am delighted, pleased, proud and chuffed as all hell to show you yet another wonderful book cover – this one is by the talented Reese Dante

When Captain Rafe Lancaster is invalided out of the Britannic Imperium’s Aero Corps after crashing his aerofighter during the Second Boer War, his eyesight is damaged permanently, and his career as a fighter pilot is over. Returning to Londinium in late November 1899, he’s lost the skies he loved, has no place in a society ruled by an elite oligarchy of powerful Houses, and is hard up, homeless, and in desperate need of a new direction in life.

That’s the likely publication date for the first Taking Shield book, Gyrfalcon.

I am beyond excited. Ridiculously so! It feels real again, after the inevitable time of waiting in the editing queue. Well, I still am in the editing queue but soon, my pretties, soon.

I’m not entirely sure what to expect when the editing starts. The two short stories I’ve had professionally edited had very little changed. Commas, mostly. I think I over use them so I strike the wriggly little tadpoles down. The editor tuts at me and puts them back. I’ve never had a content edit done and I am rather nervous. I can only hope the editor loves Bennet and Flynn as much as I do.

Anyhow, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Shield (that is, those of you I haven’t managed to bore witless about it yet), let me tell you a little about it.

Shield is set in an alternate universe where Earth’s a dead planet, dark for thousands of years; lost for so long no one even knows where the solar system is. Her last known colony, Albion, has grown to be regional galactic power in its own right. But its drive to expand and found colonies of its own has threatened an alien race, the Maess, against whom Albion is now fighting a last-ditch battle for survival in a war that’s dragged on for generations.

It’s not certain anyone has ever seen a true Maess. They have seen drones: cyborgs animated by a small neural node of organic cells. The first drones the humans met (more than a century previously) were not humanoid in shape but, as the war progresses, the Maess start to produce human-shaped drones.

Taking Shield charts the missions and adventures of Shield Captain Bennet, scion of a prominent military family. Bennet, also an analyst with the Military Strategy Unit, will uncover crucial data about the Maess to help with the war effort. Against the dem

ands of his family’s ‘triple goddess’ of Duty, Honour and Service, is set Bennet’s relationships with lovers and family. When the series opens, Bennet is at odds with his long term partner, Joss, who wants him out of the military and back in an academic, archaeological career. He’s estranged from his father, Caeden, who is the commanderof Fleet’s First Flotilla. Events of the first book, Gyrfalcon, in which he is sent to his father’s ship to carry out an infiltration mission behind Maess lines, improve his relationship with Caeden, but bring with them the catalyst that will destroy the one with Joss: one Fleet Lieutenant Flynn, who, over the course of the series, develops into Bennet’s main love interest

Over the Taking Shield arc of six novels, Bennet will see the extremes to which humanity’s enemies, and his own people, will go to win the war. Some of it is not pretty.

The next big step after editing will be the cover design, I think. Sadly, I don’t think it will look like this. But a girl can hope.

Grins at you all.  Writing is fun, isn’t it?

Read all about it there.