Well, I’ve pressed publish on the Twisted Wishes paperbacks! They’ll be out there, soon. When I was discussing cover concepts with LC Chase, I has mentioned seeing some floral covers for rockstar romances, and I liked the different concept. Classy. She came up with two treatments, and I ended up loving and using both.
You’ve seen the covers for the ebooks. Here are the covers for the paperbacks!
They’re each $14.95. I know people have been wanting these for a long while. In the next day or two, they’ll be available!
I’d like to set up an online store to sell signed paperbacks of all my books. So that’ll be in the works, soon.
And now, I’ll be getting back to working on Shift Change.
I’ve just pressed publish on the reissue of the Twisted Wishes series ebooks! They should be live in the next 72 hours or so. I’ve enrolled them in Kindle Unlimited for 90 days, mostly because they’ve never been in KU, having been wide since they were first published.
Hopefully, this will introduce a whole new group of people to Ray, Zavier, Dom, and Mish. Rereading them while formatting the text reminded me how much I love these books, and this group of friends. I hope they find a few new fans, too.
Paperbacks are in the works, too… and they will have different covers.
The books themselves were very lightly edited. No new content.
I’m sitting at an airport and my flight is delayed, so it’s the perfect time to post an update! (Ugh. Airports.)
Shift Change is still in progress. We’re in the thick of it now. I’m guessing it’ll be out sometime mid year 2026, but don’t hold us to that. Could be earlier, could be later.
I’ve received my rights back for the Twisted Wishes series, and they’re currently out of print (except for the audio books) until I get them back up. I have some lovely covers coming, and I can’t wait to share them. Expect those in the next few weeks.
I’m still working on my paranormal shifter book, which now has a title of Ravenheart. That’ll come out next fall, because it really should be a spooky season release.
I have so many things half finished. No idea what I’ll pick up after Ravenheart and Shift Change. I owe you all a sequel to Close Quarter. But I also really want to write my beach books, and another hockey romance. I guess we’ll see!
Two or so weeks ago, I contacted Carina Press to request my rights back for the Twisted Wishes series. Today, I noticed that Counterpoint had vanished from Amazon, so I assume that they’re starting to pull the books down, in anticipation of a rights reversal.
I’m in the process of reformatting the books and getting new cover art. I also need to rewrite the blurbs. This takes some time, and I expected the reversion process to take a little longer.
The ebooks may be unavailable for a bit (the audiobooks will remain available, as those are on a different contract), but when I rerelease them, they’ll also be available in print.
In other news, progress continues on Shift Change, and on the Paranormal I’ve decided to call Ravenheart. I promise, new stuff soon!
A view of downtown Pittsburgh I took from the Day Job office earlier this year.
Hello from Pittsburgh. It’s been a hot minute since I’ve posted anything, huh? When last I posted, I think Scoreless Game was about to come out. Well, that did come out, in print and audio. You can find those everywhere you buy books, including directly from LA Witt’s storefront. Yes, audio is there too. (She sends me half the royalties, don’t worry.)
We’re slowly working on the third book in the On The Board series, Shift Change. It’s Sean Klinger (Zing) and Chad Wayland’s story. Sean was introduced in Scoreless Game who gradually came out as genderfluid, and you might remember Chad as Isaac’s friend from Rookie Mistake that also, unfortunately, was a victim of Travis Canterbury. Both Chad and Sean will get their happy ever after, and we’ll get to see Julien and Isaac’s wedding, too.
In the meantime, I’ve been writing. I didn’t post about it here, but I released Love of the Game, a low-angst, grumpy-ish/sunshine hockey romance, part of a shared world series called The Games We Play. It’s available in paperback and as an audiobook, narrated by Michael Ferraiuolo.
Drake Williams was the up-and-coming young player on the Pittsburgh Lions, racking up points like a star. Now in his third season, his star has fallen and his scoring touch is gone. The puck hates his stick, and he’s more liability than asset. No other team in the major league wants him. When the Lions waive him, he’s sent to the Greensburg Otters—proof of how far he’s dropped.
Greensburg feels like a million miles from Pittsburgh rather forty. But when Drake unexpectedly finds a queer biker bar off the beaten path, he thinks he might survive his time in the minors, especially when Jon, the bar’s sexy owner, flirts with him. That is, until the next morning, when he’s re-introduced to Jon as Jonny Eriksson, team captain of the Otters.
Jon Eriksson’s got the hockey IQ but not the hands or the wheels for the big league, and that’s fine. He likes the Otters. Of course he knows who Drake is, and he’s intrigued by the distraught, young player. Jon knows Drake’s the real deal—a star in the making—and will only be on the Otters long enough to recapture his game. It’s Jon’s duty to help rekindle that love for the game.
That’s not all that gets ignited, though. Soon enough, they’re tangled into each other’s life in a way Jon’s never felt before. But what happens to their smoldering love once Drake is recalled to the Lions?
I also produced two audiobooks, one of Cinnamon Roll, and the other of Close Quarter. Both were also narrated by Michael Ferraiuolo.
I’ve got a few projects on the back-burner, including a paranormal romance. But I’m not the fastest writer, as you have probably gathered.
Outside my writing life, I’ve been learning to play hockey, joined an adult hockey league, and have been taking art classes at the local art center (mostly pastel painting and pottery), along with keeping up with my day job as a technical writer.
I also adopted a re-homed Maine Coon cat aptly named Rex. He’s a giant baby.
Isaac gathered the cards at the center of the table. “So, you and me, and Karlsson and Sidorov—Sido?”
I’d never seen Elias roll his eyes quite so hard. “It’s Elias, or Karly.”
Isaac’s sheepish grin was lovely. “Okay.”
Nikki leveled another glare at me before shifting his attention to Isaac. “You can call me Nisha here.” He gestured to the four of us.
So, one thing about hockey is that everyone pretty much has a nickname. Take the Penguins. Evgeni Malkin is Geno or G. Kris Letang is Tanger (though his glove says Legend and yes there’s a story behind that). Sidney Crosby is.. well, he’s Sid. Marcus Petterson has been Dragon, but is now Petey (as are all Petterssons, it seems) and that caused some confusion when Jeff Petry joined the team, because he was also Petey, but is now JP. Anyway… nicknames.
So, yes, the boys on the Griffins have nicknames, too. Some, like Nisha, have more than one. Names are important, and a sign of the closeness of a relationship, or the formality of a situation. You’ll see some of this come out in Scoreless Game.
Without further ado, here are the main ones mentioned in the Rookie Mistake (will update sometime after Scoreless Game comes out, since adding those might constitute spoilers):
Once upon a time, LA Witt and I got an idea for a hockey romance. That was Rookie Mistake. Halfway through writing that book, we knew Julien and Isaac’s teammates, Elias and Nisha, were going to have a book of their own. Scoreless game is that book.
We knew their romance wouldn’t be easy, and boy, it was not. They love each other so much, but are completely oblivious to the other’s adoration. There are reasons for this, of course. The book is also an exploration of how the events of Rookie Mistake and the very large shift in the status quo of their lives culminates in all that’s been hidden bubbling up to the surface. As the book opens, their friendship is teetering on the edge of annihilation. And they fall over that.
But their love… well their love for each other is what saves them. We promise.
It will be release on March 1, which at the time of this writing, is a scant two day away (though the physical forms of the book are available now).
Blurb
At nearly thirty-one years old, Pittsburgh Griffins captain Elias Karlsson’s hockey years are numbered. Everything is changing around him, including his eleven-year friendship with Nikolai Sidorov. Elias would give anything for Nisha to be a permanent part of his life, but their once bedrock-strong bond has broken into a million pieces, and Elias doesn’t know why. More than anything, Elias wants his friend back, but if that isn’t an option, maybe it’s time for him to look outside of hockey for someone to be there with him when hockey isn’t an option anymore.
Nisha’s world is splintering apart. He’s been in love with his two best friends for years, but now one of them has someone. The other, Elias, is searching for everything Nisha wishes he could give him… but he’s looking for it in anyone but Nisha. The farther his friends slip away, the deeper the loneliness sinks in and the bleaker his empty future looks. What can he do but numb the pain in the only ways he knows how?
On the eve of the season opener, Nisha’s unexplained absence threatens the cohesion of the team and puts him and Elias on a collision course of strong wills, broken hearts, and shattered trust. In the end, they may lose the very thing that matters most to them both: each other.
Scoreless Game is approximately 180,000 words, including a bonus short story. This asexual-pansexual romance is book 2 in the On the Board series.
CW: on-page struggles with alcoholism and binge-drinking, suicidal ideation, toxic family dynamics, acephobia
So, I unexpectedly co-authored a book with L.A. Witt at the end of last year/beginning of this year. Wasn’t planned at all. She moved it Pittsburgh recently, and we started going to hockey games together. She got an idea, I got an idea, we mashed them together, and Rookie Mistake came about.
It was not the book we expected to write when we started, but Isaac and Julien had their own plans. 150,000 words later…
Rookie Mistake will be out on June 28th, just in time for the post-Cup off-season!
Here’s the blurb and cover:
Rookie forward Isaac Rivera is still finding his footing in the big leagues where he’s no longer the best player on the roster. It’s a whole new world, especially now that several of his hockey idols have become teammates. Friends, even.
There’s one who’s more than a hockey idol, though… and he might end up being more than a friend.
Julien Landry is a powerhouse on the ice. In eight years, he’s become one of the league’s top defensemen and the heartthrob everyone wants to bed. But fallout from a painful mistake as a rookie, followed by years of rough-and-tumble hookups, have him itching for something more.
When a connection sparks between him and Isaac, he discovers what he’s been missing: someone he can trust with his body and his heart. As long as Isaac and Julien keep the heat between them off the ice, what could go wrong?
But Julien’s past is never far behind him, and when it comes crashing in, he might lose everything—his career, his friends, and the first person he’s ever really loved.
The entire Takeover series has been re-released, with beautiful new covers by Cate Ashwood, and a very light edit. If you already own these ebooks, there’s no need to buy them again.
The first book, Takeover, also contains the short story A Private Merger, which can also be found here.
Currently, the ebooks are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, so they’re only available at Amazon. I’ll take them wide again at some point, but they’ve never been in KU before, and it’s a whole different batch of readers.
They’re still available in translations and as audiobooks.
However, there are now paperbacks, which should be available at all retailers, soon! They just need to wind their way through distribution channels. I have no idea how long that takes, but you’ll be able to order them from your favorite independent, soon.
A quick note to state that the Takeover series is temporarily unavailable as ebooks. I received my rights back and will be republishing ebooks of these titles, as well as publishing paperback versions (for the first time ever in English).
Audiobook versions and translations are unaffected.
It’s taking a little bit to reformat the books, but I’ll have them up as soon as I can. I also intend to include Takeover: A Private Merger as a bonus story in Takeover. Other than cleaning up typos I see, I’m not significantly changing the text.
I do have new covers, though! Here’s the first one, designed by Cate Ashwood:
Anna Zabo 