Welcome to the blog, Tanya!
1.
Tell us about you.
I live in the northeastern United States with my boyfriend and my cat. I’m going to allow my boyfriend his privacy, but the cat’s name is Fred. Here’s a picture of him dressed up for Christmas. You can see how much he enjoyed that. Fred’s favorite things are pats and food. If you aren’t feeding him, you should be patting him, and if you aren’t patting him, you’re useless and must die.
Oh, you said tell you about me. My favorite things are chocolate and good reviews. Don’t make me kill you.
Ed.- You got me at hello 😉
2.
Optimist or pessimist?
Optimism and pessimism are different filters through which we try to predict the future. I’ve given up on trying to predict the future. Whatever will be, will be, and it’ll be all right, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now. So, that sounds somewhat optimistic.
3.
You have a lot of themes at play in WHEN IT ALL FALLS DOWN. Without giving spoilers, what underlying message do you hope to convey through the work?
The primary theme in When It All Falls Down is that relationships (people) are all that matter but that in order to make our relationships work, we have to be forgiving of each other.
4.
Are we better off as a society today? What, in your opinion, is the biggest lesson learned from our past?
We really are. I know it doesn’t feel that way in the US right now, but progress has never been linear. The overall trend, if you look at the history of civilization, has always been towards a more inclusive rendering of “liberty and justice for all” and I don’t think anyone can stop that upward trend for long, even if they manage to set back the clock temporarily.
5.
Growing up is tough. Growing old, maybe tougher. What does the raging success of the 50 Shades series say about adult readership? Are they missing the point?
I haven’t read 50 Shades, so I can’t render an opinion on the series itself, but it’s an example of the billionaire trope which is enjoying popularity right now. Women today are required to be very strong, very adult, and so the temptation is there to escape into a world where someone (a man, for those who are heterosexual) takes over the adulting. That doesn’t mean those women want to abdicate control in real life, but at the end of a day of juggling work, family, and cultural expectations, they’re tired and sometimes overwhelmed and they deserve whatever fantasy brings them relief and joy.
6.
The definitions of family and gender are changing. Is it legislative or evolutionary?
I don’t think the compositions of family or gender are changing, just our ability to recognize the legitimacy of those various compositions thanks to social evolution. Legislation then slowly catches up to understanding.
7.
What are you working on now?
My next release will be Aftercare, which is a M/M BDSM romance. It features a Muslim immigrant (a very urbane, but somewhat, reluctant Dom) and the attorney who’s handling his brother’s murder case. I’ll be releasing that hopefully in April if I can get the editing finished! In the meantime, I’m writing a dystopia like everyone else in the US.
8.
Any last words?
I just want to put in a plug for the #guesswrite competition on Twitter. Any writer who’s trying to break in to self-publishing can definitely benefit from this prize package. I’m grateful to all the people who came before me, like the hosts of #guesswrite, for their guidance and example. I’ve made friends through Twitter and through NaNoWriMo who’ve critiqued my manuscripts, shared their lessons-learned, and been a source of inspiration and motivation. Remember: relationships are everything.
Ed. – Amen, sista!
When It All Falls Down
by Tanya Chris
Published by Tanya Chris Publishing (self-published)
M/M contemporary, coming-of-age romance, 64K words
Available 2/2/17 from Amazon in paperback and on Kindle. Eligible for Kindle Unlimited.
Blurb:
Maybe Charlie should have waited until he graduated high school before coming out, because since that revelation there’s been a growing distance between him and his friends. Charlie’s tough, though. He doesn’t mind eating lunch alone or watching his former gang interact with their new best buddy. What he does mind is seeing Drew Lavoitt suffer the same fate.
Drew didn’t come out. As far as he, or anyone else knows, he’s straight. What Drew did is accidentally hit and kill a little girl. Now the boy who was voted Most Popular, and who Charlie has maybe had a crush on since eighth grade, faces financial ruin, expulsion, and the fear that if he’s not everything, he’s not enough.
Popularity, wealth, acclaim—these things are easily lost. In each other’s arms, Drew and Charlie find something that can’t be taken from them. Together the two build a foundation on which they can re-create their lives.
Excerpt:
“Drew, I’m not your boyfriend.”
“At school, you said yes.”
“I can be your boyfriend at school, if that makes it easier for you to be at school, but I’m not your real boyfriend. Are you really expecting me to be … faithful to you?”
“I came out to my parents for you.”
“I don’t understand that part either. I don’t understand any of this.”
“What’s so hard to understand, Charlie? I want to be your boyfriend. Not just at school. All the time. But if you don’t want me—”
“Come on,” I said, cutting him off, “don’t start the drama up. You’ve got to know how much I want you.”
“Then we don’t have a problem.” He snuggled deeper into my side until he was rubbing his cheek along mine, our faces pressed right up together. Drew might not have a problem, but I did. My problem was that I wanted to turn my face into his and kiss him—not a quick brush of lips like what he’d given me in the hallway yesterday but the real thing. And then I decided, fuck it. I’d show him that being my boyfriend wasn’t what he wanted.
He was startled when I did it—when I brought my hand up to cup the back of his head and hold him still so I could really get my mouth against his, my tongue between those softly parted lips. Like he hadn’t been expecting it, like he hadn’t known that this was what happened when you rubbed your almost-too-skinny boy body up against a gay guy. He gasped, which opened him further up to me, and his body got stiff where it had been pliant, and I thought you see? and then that thought vanished beneath a whole bunch of oh my God because once he got past that initial shock, he kissed me back.
Praise for When It All Falls Down
“Read this faster than I’ve read anything in ages. Bittersweet, and strangely addictive.”
“Lately, books have seemed almost boring…and then I read this one.”
“Drew and Charlie are instantly shippable, love these boys to pieces.”
About the Author
Tanya writes in a variety of romantic and erotic genres, being an avid follower of many of these genres herself. Some of her favorites are M/M romance, MFM threesomes, and BDSM with male submissives.
Tanya lives in New England with her boyfriend and her cat and has participated in many of the activities about which she writes, but not all of them. It’s left to the reader to decide which are which.
http://www.tanyachris.com
Twitter: @tanyachrs
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tanyachrispublishing/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15067939.Tanya_Chris
Thanks for dropping by, Tanya. See you around the Twitterverse! — A.B.
My current work is Snowfall’s Secret. It’s about a girl from another world who must live like any other tween on Earth (and she suffers from amnesia). Of course, she learns to enjoy shopping at the mall with her very own debit card and has a few secrets. At its core is the message that everyone has value and has something special to share.
story that’s alternative history to give myself a mental stretch. I have this irrational fear that the last thing I finish writing will be my last. I wonder if I’m not alone.
Welcome to Trowbridge City. It’s home to superheroes, maniacal villains, and everyday citizens. The stories here aren’t about good versus evil, but about hard choices, prejudices, and experiences complicated by superpowers.
I don’t work in just fantasy, but whatever genre I write in I like to use a blend of science, history and romance in a realistic way.
No one I know, however in a male dominated world, brave, self-assured females (and none of us are self-assured, right?) are often overlooked. GAIL IS GAEA is based on the legend of Nyabinghi, Mother, warrior-goddess of Africa. In ROD OF REALITY and GOBLIN WAR, the MC’s are male and female, neither one self-assured, but knowing they have a problem to solve and trying their best to solve it. Nevertheless, if you look for brave, iron-willed woman you can find them from Boudicca to Margaret Thatcher.
Pontus, Typhon, and Chron crowded around her. “I thought you did not want to be called the spirit goddess?” Pontus said, a puzzled look on his face. “Now you are calling yourself that.”
All Jackie wanted was equal treatment and a chance to ride a dragon. When her cruel brother-in-law takes over as head of the household and makes her quit school, she is forced to do all the chores and collect wood in the forest. Jackie finds a dragon’s egg, and although law forbids girls to ride dragons, she secretly hatches the egg, and dons boy’s clothes. After she brings the gift of fire to the dragonriders, she becomes an accepted member of their band.
Paradox Lost Book 2: The Ultimate Paradox is about triplets (DJ, Matt, and Elisa) that are also time travelers. DJ and Matt are typical brothers, shutting out their sister, but not for the typical reasons. They sense that she’s not really supposed to be with them, so they’re giving her the cold shoulder.
Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.
I’m Dennis James Sullivan XI. Call me DJ. Everybody does. I’m the oldest of triplets. We’re pretty astral with our powers. Not just telekinesis and telepathy but other stuff. My big thing is the ability to use brute force when I’m out helping my dad. That’s why Matt died instead of me. Kind of sucks. I could have… well, maybe I couldn’t have stopped those boulders. We’ll never really know that.
Yo, Matt here. Yeah. That’s right. The guy that died in the first book is coming on strong in this one. I get to tell my own story, and let me tell you, I’m not gonna hang around wherever the cosmos has stuck me and cry about being dead.
My name is Elisa Sullivan. I’m a Traveler. That means that I get to travel through time on these really great Gateways. And I can talk to them. Not many Travelers think Gateways are sentient, but they are.
A. B. Funkhauser, Author 