I have two Christmas stories that are on the shorter side:
Cherish & Give (DC Files 1.5) – a novelette featuring the first holiday season of Sam and Blake as a couple (available only for my newsletter subscribers)
Last Minute Santa (following right after Married before Christmas) – a short story about Daniel and Noa’s first Christmas Eve as a couple (available for free on this website)
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I also gathered my older, shorter stories into this collection:
Walking into the Marine Corps recruitment office.
Experiencing an earthquake in Alaska.
Meeting a TV crush in the elevator.
Going to the Winter Olympics.
These were the turning points for the men in this collection as they were trying to figure out their lives and stumbled into love instead.
Every story is a stand-alone and there are no cliffhangers.
Three of the four stories were previously published separately by MLR Press. Impossible to Resist has never been published before.
STORIES INCLUDED:
OPEN ENDINGS
A man walks into a recruitment office… and nothing goes according to plan.
Matt Holston, a soon-to-be college graduate, is trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. One of his ideas is enlisting to the US Marine Corps, but when he goes to the recruitment office to check out his options, he meets a guy who is a complete opposite of what Matt imagined a recruitment officer to be.
Cole Perry had suffered from PTSD after his second tour overseas and now he just wants to get to the end of his contract. Transferred from his old unit, he may be a glorified office clerk, but what he’s definitely not is a guy who would help anybody make the same mistake he did.
So what makes Matt come back to see Cole again if not the spiel about serving his country?
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TREMORS OF THE PAST
When two men with complicated past meet at the conference in Alaska, things are already on shaky ground.
Derek Warden is certain his boss sent him to cover the conference in the middle of nowhere, Alaska, to punish him for something. He is ready for the whole thing to be over before it even begins.
Hayden Shaw has been looking forward to this conference for months. The problem of fracking is very dear to his heart and he can’t wait to spend the long weekend with like-minded people.
Neither of them expected the big earthquake, but most importantly—they didn’t expect each other. Meeting again after over a decade may result in something even more surprising that the ground trembling under their feet.
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IMPOSSIBLE TO RESIST
Meeting your TV crush in the elevator simply doesn’t happen.
…Right?
Tim Parker is a fan blogger and he’s in Miami for the Comic-Con, so it’s already an amazing trip. But then he bumps into his TV crush (Josh. Freaking. Witchell.) and the whole weekend turns into a wish-fulfillment dream.
Who is Tim to say no to that?
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RUNNING OFF THE EDGE
After the knee injury, Liam O’Connor, the former gold medalist, is no longer able to compete at the Olympics. He’s in Sochi as an assistant coach for another male figure skater and hopes to avoid Eric Lanney as much as possible.
Meanwhile, Eric is here to compete for gold in pair skating, but is that the only thing that will be important to him? Or will it fade in comparison to the spark that never died?
When the former lovers meet again in Russia, they will have a chance to learn that a gold medal isn’t the greatest prize you can win at the Winter Olympics.