Life is messy.

People are mean.

Time is short.

These things are true… and they’re also not true. Sometimes, life is neat and orderly. Sometimes, people are kind and go far beyond the call of duty to help. Sometimes, we have all the time in the world to accomplish our goals. I want to tell you, that even when time is short and life messy or people mean we as writers can use times to fill the well of our creativity. We can store the moments of utter frustration and panic, preserve them and later, later at some time when our characters are floundering, we can pull out those moments of angst and turmoil to inject realism into the struggles our protagonists go through.

I know this because I’ve done it, and half the battle in any skirmish whether it be with time, or circumstance or people or life itself, is knowing what your battle is, and knowing what you stand to gain or lose. For us, the writer, the artists, the creative souls, every skirmish life draws us into is in the end only another source of inspiration.

I have a friend, a mild mannered, sweet guy. He’s average, you know? Brown hair, brown eyes, he stands about five foot ten. He has an easy laugh that makes others smile. He’ll never sway the masses with his smile, but it does brighten the corner of the room he’s standing in. He’s the inspiration for one of my more dramatic characters.

Once, just once I saw a spark in his eye. He was contemplating something to do with protecting his family, his wife whom he’s madly, passionately in love with… and for a split second he was Superman mixed with Wolverine mixed with Thor. The moment was there and gone in a flash. I thought nothing of it for years and years…

And then, when I was creating this character, this amazing being who hid for years in plain sight… my mild mannered friend and what he looked like in that moment bubbled to the surface of my mind. I had a character name. I had a physical type. And I had the reason for his transformation.

So when you are despairing because life is ripping you away from your writing. When you are wailing and gnashing your teeth over the missed opportunities and missed connections that this or that inconvenience has caused, remember that you are storing up memories for the future. You might not even know that the coffee shop boy, or the check out girl at the supermarket, or even your very mild mannered friend in a rare moment of ferocity is merely biding their time to become an amazing character in a book you don’t even know is lurking somewhere on the distant horizon of your creative world.

Treasure these times.

You might end up with someone incomprehensible and marvelous, like Lewell’yn from my book, Tian’s Hero. And all from the gleam in an average man’s ordinary brown eyes.

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A spy posing as an assassin finds himself riding the ragged edge of sanity during his latest mission; a frantic search for fabled lost colonists who fled his planet steps ahead of a devastating plague.

Lewell’yn’s situation would be difficult enough with reliable help, supplies, and information… instead he’s light-years from any of the above and saddled with the two huge complications: a fiercely passionate healer, and a sweet, innocently sexy chef.

The bombs are in place. The detonators are set. The chrono is ticking. Caught between two men desperate to escape the clutches pirates and an insidious, hidden enemy, can Lewell’yn find a path to become Tian’s hero?

You can read all about the character, and join in the fun discussions and general mayhem over at the M/M Romance group on Goodreads where Tian’s Hero is one of August’s Books of the Month.  And here’s a teensy taste of what’s going on with Lewell’yn.

Excerpt

Lewell’yn watched the little Akanti dance around the kitchen. Two weeks of observing the little man cook had equated to two weeks of shagging the hell out of him. The graceful, sensual way Tian moved while preparing food never failed to stir Lewell’yn to hunger for more than the next delicious meal. Lewell’yn had his cock in the little man’s arse every chance he got, and still couldn’t get enough of Tian.

The little fucker was addictive.

The man kept colour in the world. Lewell’yn had suspected, from the moment he got close enough to breathe in the sweetly musky smell so uniquely Tian, the man was

his. He’d known for sure when touching Tian the first time brought colour back into his vision so quickly. Lewell’yn craved the stabilising force Tian exuded more than the smoking hot sex. He knew far worse things to be hooked on. Lewell’yn had used most of them at one time or another. None of them gave him that higher than high, floating through clouds of ecstasy on the cusp of a mind-altering, life-changing orgasm feeling that one sip from Tian’s lips did.

Time for another hit of Tian.

One of the quirks of Lewell’yn’s DNA lay in his inability to become physically addicted to any substance. Though the feeling Peaches gave him might be the

exception. Lewell’yn knew himself for a greedy bastard. As often as he had the gorgeous redhead he always wanted more. Lewell’yn had seen to Tian properly not twenty minutes ago and yet here he stood with his cock trying to tear its way right out of his shipsuit. The next time Tian wagged his sweet arse—

Tian bent down to pull a heavy saucepan from the drawer below the big industrial stove, wiggling his round arse. Lewell’yn cursed once, stalked over, snatched the smaller man up and flung him face down in the midst of the vegetables Tian had just finished cutting. Lewell’yn yanked the little Akanti’s pants down below the man’s trim hips. He managed, just barely, to avoid ripping them again. “Lewell’yn, damn it, you’re gonna make me late with the meal again.”

“Peaches, I warned you this morning not to wag your fuckable little arse at me. If you wanted to serve your meals on time ya shouldn’t have been advertising for a quick an’ dirty shag.”

Tian gave an annoyed sounding huff as he tried to smack Lewell’yn with the closest weapon he could grab. Lewell’yn grinned down at the little man currently sprawled in the midst of dinner’s stir-fry ingredients. The best thing Tian came up with to use as a weapon turned out to be a bunch of scallions. Reaching backwards over his head he hit Lewell’yn solidly with them three times. Then Lewell’yn slid his cock, generously lubed with cooking oil, half way up Tian’s wonderfully tight arse. Tian stopped swinging his makeshift weapon, opting instead to thrust his hips back at Lewell’yn as fast and hard as he could.

“Lewell’yn I-unnnh-I’m g-going to… oh, harder… I’m going to—unh—give you all the burned food Jeram makes for the—oh!—next week if unnh you make me ruin—ahh—my veg-oooh-tables.”

Lewell’yn’s grin grew wider as Tian began to lose his ability to piece together rational sentences. It seemed he and Tian shared an addiction. Lewell’yn lost the grin, tightened his hands on Tian’s hips and concentrated on fucking his pretty cook into complete incoherence.

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Check back on Friday for your chance to win a copy of Tian’s Hero.