Sight and Sinners by Susan Mac Nicol

3/1/2015

Publisher: Borough’s Publishing Group Cover Artist: Art Department of Borough’s Publishing Group

Excerpt:

The man Taylor was blowing definitely didn’t know how the hell to keep quiet. Taylor’s lips were wrapped around his dick, while above him a man stood, panting and moaning, turning the air blue with his curses. Taylor stopped what he was doing, causing the blowjob recipient to groan in dismay, and glared at the sweaty face above him.

            “For Christ’s sake, Georgie, can you stop it with the fucking porn noises?” He glanced around him nervously. “This is where I work, damn it, and if anyone hears you they’ll come outside to see what all the fuss is about.”

            Georgie’s wide eyes cast a quick glance around the deserted alleyway behind ‘Music Mayhem’ where Taylor was employed, then looked down at Taylor kneeling between his legs.

            “Sorry, mate, it’s just that you’re so damn good at this and it’s been a while.”

Pages or Words: 66,000 words

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Meet Susan Mac Nicol

Susan Mac Nicol is a self confessed bookaholic, an avid watcher of videos of sexy pole dancing men, self confessed geek and nerd and in love with her Smartphone. This little treasure is called ‘the boyfriend’ by her long suffering husband, who says if it vibrated, there’d be no need for him. Susan hasn’t had the heart to tell him there’s an app for that…

She is never happier than when sitting in the confines of her living room/study/on a cold station platform scribbling down words and making two men fall in love. She is a romantic at heart and believes that everything happens (for the most part) for a reason. She likes to think of herself as a ‘half full’ kinda gal, although sometimes that philosophy is sorely tested.

Lover of walks in the forest, theatre productions, dabbling her toes in the cold North Sea and the vibrant city of London where you can experience all four seasons in a day , she is a hater of pantomime (so please don’t tar and feather her), duplicitous people, bigotry and self righteous idiots.

In an ideal world, Susan Mac Nicol would be Queen of England and banish all the bad people to the Never Never Lands of Wherever -Who Cares. As that’s never going to happen, she contents herself with writing her HEA stories and pretending, that just for a little while, good things happen to good people.

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A little chat with Susan! I asked that all important question: Plotter or Pantser. Here's what Susan says about that:

I am a definite Pantser. I belong to a writing circle and its founder is constantly amazed at how I manage to get from A to Z without a formal outline of any kind. He’s a sci-fi writer though, so that requires a lot more planning I think. Me, I just throw two dudes together, let them fall in lust, then taken them on the journey to love and end up happy ever after. And you know what- I have no idea how they get there; they just do.

When I was in school, my English teacher used to set me my own personal challenges. He used to give me one line- that’s all- and then say ‘Right, I want a story from you starting with that line.’ He tried to see how I got from that one line to a full blown story. I always managed it. I don’t recall the exact line he gave me once, but it was along the lines of

‘The sand of the desert shone in the bright sun’ or something like that. Within no time at all, I had a story about a film crew in the desert making a film about an alcoholic film star where the film star then turned out to be a real alcoholic and was hiding it. I don’t recall the rest but he simply raised an eyebrow at me. Then he started giving me less words to write about. “He gave up’, was one of them. I wrote about a young Russian Christian man being pursued by the Russian police for his beliefs and finding sanctuary in an old abandoned building where he met one of the deceased Russian saints who spurred hi m on. I always meant to write more on this story actually, but never did. After that, the teacher just let me get on with it. (He’s also the teacher who sello taped a paper sign to my blazer saying ‘Kick me’, as he was a bit of a comedian) Fun times.

I use that same philosophy now. When I started Stripped Bare, all I had was

‘Shane Templar watched the man standing by the bed. Shane had no idea how he’d gotten himself into this situation, but he had to admit that this wasn’t the first time.’

I had no idea what situation Shane was in, but I liked the line. Then I wrote the story around it. So Shane finds himself stripped naked and tied to a bed while a man wanks off over him. Who knew?

It was the same with Worth Keeping. Poor old Nick had no idea what was in store for him when I wrote these words. Neither did I, I just knew he had to be horribly damaged and tortured and somewhere, I’d find the reason.

At the edge of the sea cliff, Nick Mathers was overwhelmed by the sudden urge to step into thin air. He imagined his body sailing free, finally finding shattered peace on the rocks below. He closed his eyes, swallowing as the insidious pull of need threatened to take him over.

So I sit down, I write the first lines and from there the story and the characters pull me into their own little world, the world where everything is crystal clear as you type and as the ideas flow. I do keep a timeline spreadsheet with the key events and when they happen so I can check the progress of the story and don’t have the guys falling in love in one day by mistake, or magically being transported to two places at once. That’s it. The rest is down to the clicking of my fingers on the keyboard and the knowledge that somewhere, in my brain, the guys are there with me, guiding me along.