Guest Blog: Nix Winter/Faith Luna: The Imperfect Rose

There is a beautiful safety in sameness. Japanese school boys, the older ones, in those lovely uniforms, florist roses, with graceful petals laying around each other like society's promises and then we know exactly how happily-ever-after is going to happen.

First we'll meet the person we love. There will be difficulties and misunderstandings. The very darkest moment will happen, but then after that there will be happily-ever-after.

There will be a couple of children. Our jobs will be there when we show up and the planet will always forgive us.

Learning to write was like that - at least for me. I had a Plan. Looking back to those sepia toned memories hidden away in my head... I was reading sci-fi, but writing romance because love was the center of my world. I was doing my very best to be a pretty young woman. The longer one tries at the young part, the more likely one is to fail at it. Whether I failed at being a woman is open to interpretation.

There are two things I didn't fail at though. I was a fantastic parent, at least I think so. I am also a fantastic writer, also my own opinion.

If those two paths in my life though.... if all the choices I made over the years embraced, wrapping and overlapping, they'd be gnarled and variegated, tangled with happy moments, a little paralysis, screaming moments of, "Oh hell no! That's not happening!"

So there I sit, in my Japanese school boy uniform, working on finishing my degree in sociology at 45, 100 pounds over weight, a neatly tied tie and neon pink hair.... What did I tell you? Tangled and variegated.

I'll tell you what though... there is a very great deal of difference between tangled and variegated, soft and full of color, sending tendrils out into new directions.... and being the perfect rose all dried and set on the shelf like a happy memory.

Three failed marriages and twenty books later... I'm happy, strange, but happy. One of the most important persons in my life is another writer. If we were to write together, it would seriously be like Jane Austin and Ian Fleming trying to do tea...

Jane: "Sugar?"

Ian: *pulls out gun, fires, shadow in the distance clutches chest and falls over* "Yes, thank you."

"Must you...?

Ian: "Yes, actually."

And there you have it... the best stories, relationships, lives are imperfect roses, not fit to dry and cherish, but full of life and wickedly going where they ought not.

BIO:
Faith Luna is an imperfect rose. He's a sociology major with a taste for history and always seeming to argue in favor of the point farthest from commonly accepted truth. His great loves are manga and adventure stories, though love pulls at him as if he were no more than a fire fly and whispered forever was the brightest light in the night. He is the author of many books under the names of Nix Winter and Sebastian Blade.

BLURB for Driven:
Jade McAndrews loves fast, really fast. His whole world gravitates towards movement, towards fighting gravity and as far away from other people as possible.

Nicholas King is driven by wanting to make the world a better place. The darkness of his early life drives him to protect people, especially children. He's a social worker. Everything in his world is solid and stable and nothing moves fast. When one of young clients is a witness to a high profile murder - what he really needs is someone strong, someone who can keep them one step ahead of corrupt police and gangsters alike.

Their escape takes them from the hospital emergency room, through a treacherous night that wants them dead, but they're driven both by the need to survive and an unfamiliar and growing trust in each other - all they have to do is not die.

http://www.faithinthemoon.com