Our girl turned 16 today! Her mom and I sat up late last night on the back porch with her, talking about how time flies after a certain age, telling her to enjoy these years, don’t grow up too fast, etc. There was lots of laughter as we told stories on each other of just how awful we were as kids and how miraculous it was that neither of us did time… LOL. My grandaughter just shook her head. “If I did any of those things I’d be grounded until I was thirty!”
Ah, to be that young again. We gave her gifts first thing this morning, and now she’s in town getting her driver’s license. Ack! She has practiced a lot. She really is ready, but now we’ll be nervous wrecks every time she heads out the door…
Have you gone through this with your children or grandchildren? Are you “Nervous Nellies” too?
My family visits a small lake town for one week every summer. It’s near the eastern bank of Lake Michigan. We see spectacular sunsets, get to play in the cool water and damp sand, eat at favorite haunts (takeout this year), and go to the drive-in.
My vacation goal: read six books in seven days. I may be crazy, but I enjoy reading while sitting at the beach with my toes wiggling in the warm sand.
Is it cheating to read on the eight-hour drive from Dayton, OH? Usually, I can bust through most of the first book, if not the whole thing, on the way to the cabin. It says a lot about my prince’s driving because I used to get car sick while reading in a moving vehicle.
Why do I binge-read? The short answer: I love reading. The long answer: As an author, I spend most of my time writing, editing, or marketing my books. Vacation is a read-a-thon. I will leave my mask and hand sanitizer behind and travel to new towns, countries, or worlds, meet and fall in love with exciting characters, experience shenanigans, and enjoy happily ever afters.
This summer I have a sci-fi, a few paranormal books including an Ohio world of vamps & werewolves, a ghost train, a physic cold case investigator among others. Authors such as Aliya Dalrae, CJ Baty, Cynthia Carver, and Daniel Coldrspring…
The week is about family, relaxing, catching up on reading, and maybe catching a frog or turtle. I hope your summer goals are filled with summer reads.
Have a great Independence Day!
Here’s a deal for you that’s just in time for summer…
Contest
WIN A BUNDLE OF ROMANTIC COMEDY & A BRAND NEW EREADER! PLUS 60 BOOKS!
🌴$650 VALUE!☀️
The Giveaway is open internationally and ends July 8, 2020.
We (all 15 authors!) are very proud of this edition! The stories are spicy and fun! We set the price low, not because we didn’t think people would be willing to pay a higher price, but because we want to share it with as many people as we can! So, get your copy! It costs less than a cup of coffee—even the straight, unflavored cup! Remember, I have a short story in this volume, too! One related to the Montana Bounty Hunters…
Also, please visit the Collections website for the next wee while. Starting tomorrow, the authors will be sharing photos that depict an aspect of their stories, plus, there will be more contests!
UPDATE: The winners of WET DREAMS AND FANTASIES are…Pansy Petal, Michelle, and Becky Ward! The winners of MOVING TARGET are…Nooklady, bn100, and flchen!
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Happy Birthday to me! And a present for you!
Three people will win a digital copy of WEST DREAMS AND FANTASIES Love Romances Café Best All Around Book of 2019
Three people will win a digital copy of MOVING TARGET
Leave a comment. I’ll pick the winners tomorrow! You can find links to these books and more on my web site desireeholt.com
Yes, today is my birthday. I am 84 years young. And enjoyingevery day more. I am a mother, a grandmother and a great grandmother. And guess what? Still writing hot, incendiary romances and pulse-racing romantic suspense. And of course, enjoying every single minute of it.
My journey has been an interesting one. I always wanted to write but between raising three wonderful children and working a variety of jobs, the time just was not there. I finally retired at the end of 2000, but then we were all involved in our exciting move to Texas, building a new home and of course a new life. My late husband, however, was very encouraging and kept pushing me to sit down and write. So in 2005, I finally sat down and actually finished a book. A romantic suspense. TARGET. It’s been through many name changes and revisions but more about that later.
I’d probably still be wondering what to do next if not for SARA—San Antonio Romance Authors—and two women who have had and continue to have a wonderful influence in my life—Delilah Devlin and Elle James. With their guidance, I was able to figure out what the hell I was actually doing.
They were also the ones who told me when Ellora’s Cave had an open submission call, and that opened the door for what was to become an exciting career as an erotic romance author. It also led me to Totally Bound where I still continue to write. And out of that came—what else?— WET DREAMS AND FANTASIES, a box set of erotic fantasies to light up any woman’s dream!
Wet Dreams & Fantasies
AND JUST NAMED BEST ALL AROUND BOOK OF 2019 AT LOVE ROMANCES CAFÉ!
So, Happy Birthday to me! I am glad I am celebrating with all of of you.
Everyone has fantasies, right? The dreams we indulge when we’re alone in the dark. Those secret desires we only bring out when no one’s around. But what if you had a chance to make them come true? What if you had a chance to indulge your wildest, most erotic dreams? And what if, having realized one of them, you then realized there was a whole world out there where you could make all those erotic fantasies come true? For Lisa Graham, it became a journey through every fantasy she’d ever dreamed.
1 – Interlude
Rain-soaked Lisa Graham, unable to get a cab to stop for her, decided to wait out rush hour in a discreet little bar she’d never seen before. She hadn’t ever seen Mark, either, the man who invited her to share his private booth. Nor had she ever done the erotic things in public that Mark coaxed her into. Four drinks into the evening she was feeling totally wanton and completely dominated. And wondering exactly what would come next.
2 -Intermission
Lisa Graham’s erotic memories of Interlude prompted her to visit Danny’s Pub, its strange replacement, but five minutes into her first night there she got more than she bargained for.
Lisa Graham hugged to herself the memories of Interlude, the erotic pub that, it seemed, only appeared when it rained – and brought her unbelievable sex with the stranger, Mark. Scoping out Danny’s Pub, the bar that occupies the space when there’s no rain, she meets Jake, and falls into an erotic whirlpool that has a shocking surprise for her.
3. Game On
It was a picnic, but everyone was nude and Lisa Graham, was about to play the most erotic game of her life.
Brothers Mark and Jake had introduced Lisa Graham to more acts of eroticism than she’d ever fantasized about. Now they had invited her on a picnic, where everyone was nude, the main activity was a game of multiple partners, and she tumbled into new whirlpools of erotic sex. What would be next on the list?
Moving Target
And TARGET? It became MOVING TARGET and the first book in the romantic suspense series, GUARDIAN SECURITY.
They’re trying to kill her, and she doesn’t know why…
Kathryn Holt knows only that she has to get far away as fast as she can. In a frantic, cross-country odyssey, she transforms from pliable Kathryn to feisty, determined Kate Miller, staying one step ahead of the killers on her trail. Then Fate delivers her into the hands of a dark knight with a tortured past. The safety he offers is as tempting as he is.
After having his perfect life ripped apart, recluse Quinn sees protecting Kate as his chance for redemption. He never plans on wanting the guarded beauty, never mind falling for her. Denying the explosive chemistry between them is useless, and as danger closes in, he must fight to expose the killer or risk history repeating itself.
Okay, I’ll do it. Only because I’m soooooooooo frustrated. I’m 62 tomorrow. I have a compromised immune system. A double-whammy. So, I take extra care to make sure I’m safe when I’m out and about. I live in the South, so most of the folks around me watch and believe the news from a certain major news channel and don’t bother ever reading for themselves. (I’m trying not to be nasty, really!) The problem is that these folks believe that wearing a mask somehow infringes on their freedom, and they choose not to. Which means, I have to be extra cautious when I’m out and about, which is rare because I know they aren’t taking precautions to save my life.
They think masks are inconvenient, mess up their makeup, their hair, that they look stupid wearing them. They hear that masks aren’t effective keeping them from being infected but don’t seem to get that the masks do help prevent the droplets they breathe out from getting into the air and onto other surfaces. My wearing a mask means I’m doing my part to keep you safe. You not wearing a mask is telling me you don’t care about my life. That’s how I see it, and it angers me when I pass someone who smirks at me who isn’t wearing a mask. And anger is not too strong a word for what I feel, because I think my life is worth protecting just as much as yours is.
Am I wrong? Here’s your chance to vent, whether you’re with me or ag‘in me.
I may not comment on everyone’s post, but I will read your words. I have work to do today. I’m a writer and an editor. I work seven days a week.
Yes, I love getting to know the characters that slip out of the shadows at the back of mind where they’ve been living, sometimes for decades without my being aware of them. I enjoy the plotting process which consists of waking up in the middle of the night to mull over possibilities, running down roads both promising and dead-end, and throwing possibilities into a Word program called “Notes”, but I have to have a strong picture in my mind of where everything happens before I can write the first word.
I love going for solitary drives accompanied by Neil Diamond going full blast while the world around me becomes part of me. I’m a mountain gal born and bred. I don’t understand cities. They don’t speak to me. But give me the wilderness and I come alive.
That’s true even when I’m writing erotica.
Case in point, I’m in the process of releasing two self-published books. Cry of the Wolves will hit the virtual shelves on the 29th. I haven’t set on a release date for the companion novella Call of the Wolves, sometime in July.
The two connected stories came to me unbidden. I had no idea that’s what would happen when I went for a hike near Crater Lake at a place known as The Gorge. The Rogue River of southern Oregon flows through The Gorge, or rather it fights to. As I explain in the forward for the two Wolves stories, an ancient volcanic eruption sent molten lava to the Rogue. At one spot, the river was squeezed into a narrow channel. Every spring during snow runoff, the river screams and boils as it struggles through the lava.
That’s where I found my characters. Each in their own way, they listened to and watched the ageless battle between rock and water. That wild place impacted them as deeply as it did me and gave rise to the ghost wolves. I’m including a couple of pictures I took. I just wish readers could feel the spray and sense the ground shivering.
A big part of the writing business consists of getting the word out, which is what I’m doing right now via a couple of projects designed to try to garner reviews.
The illustrator Norman Rockwell has been lauded and lambasted for projecting an image of America that was too mom and apple pie and White. If that’s your image of Rockwell, I’d like to give you a different one. One that confronted and encouraged through his works The Golden Rule (1961), The Problem We All Live With (1964), Murder in Mississippi (1965) and New Kids in the Neighborhood (1967). These works were created by a conscience rooted in the aspiration that “all men are created equal.”
Though never fully realized by the founding fathers, Rockwell imbued their aspirations in his Saturday Evening Postcovers, especially in his illustrations of FDR’s Four Freedoms. I can’t look at that series and not hear the words to songs of equality like “The House I Live In” or “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught.” Innocent as those covers seem, Rockwell was saying here’s how the world should be for everybody. Ironically, the Post’s policy wouldn’t extend that equality and respect to black people. Blacks on their covers had to be depicted in subservient positions. Rockwell left the Post in 1963 and accepted commissions from Look magazine where he could portray the flipside of the Post’s America. But sometimes Look found his work too controversial to publish, too. Fortunately, that didn’t happen often.
Criticized for his choice of subject and called a hypocrite and a lying propagandist, Rockwell painted the truth being shown nightly on TV news and revealed daily in newspaper stories about the Civil Rights struggle. I was a kid in the 60’s watching Americans of all races and creeds and religions marching in the streets, being doused by fire hoses and having police dogs turned on them because they believed all people are created equal and deserved to be treated that way.
The Norman Rockwell Museum has a virtual exhibit of Rockwell’s 1960’s works. Check it out here: https://bit.ly/37H3TCr where you can also hear from Ruby Bridges, the little girl in The Problem We All Live With.
Rockwell’s 1960s work asked Americans, “Which side are you on?” in the same way Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley and Gil Noble did in their network broadcasts. Sixty years later, these works are asking us the same question. Sixty years later, I hear us answering it in peaceful demonstrations being held all over the world, in paintings on the plywood of boarded-up Manhattan storefronts, in legislation passed to combat police brutality, in court decisions upholding LGBTQ rights. People are answering, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you must become the law of the land.” Despite authorities and administrations trying to divide us, people are answering and choosing to be on the right side of history because “the time is always right to do what is right.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In the 1960s, Rockwell used his work to confront and encourage. May we use our resources to do the same today.
Haunted Serenade
All the women in Anora Madison’s family have lived as “Poor Butterflies”: women still longing for but deserted by the men they loved. Determined to be the first to escape a life of abandonment, Anora fled Harlem for Brooklyn, severing her ties with her mother Angela and with the man who broke her heart, Winston Emerson, the father of her child.
Six years later, she comes back to Harlem to make peace, but a malignant spirit manifests itself during the homecoming, targeting her mother, her aunt, Winston and their little girl. Determined to stop the evil now trying to destroy all she loves, Anora must finally turn to Winston for help. But will their efforts be too little too late?
He nodded thoughtfully. “Why not? Self-hate has bedeviled people of color all over the world for hundreds of years. Being looked down upon because you’re not White, accepting you’re incapable of self-determination because you’re dark and not light is being confronted everywhere. The independence movements in Africa. The Civil Rights movement here. Why wouldn’t it be challenged in your mother’s house?”
I’d listened to sermons about the devil, sung hymns and praise songs to put him in his place. But I’d intellectualized all that. Those were metaphors for the evil humans did. But what if that metaphor represented real energy, energy that had agency, agency that needed to be combatted?
“Come on.” Winston picked up a tray. “Let’s put the pumpkins in the windows. I need some physical activity to balance all this intellectual speculating.”
I took the other tray and followed him into the parlor. We placed a pumpkin on each sill of the bay window then lit the candle inside.
Cammie was right. They weren’t at all scary. Their grins glowed with welcome.
We ascended to the second floor and repeated our pumpkin placement and lighting ritual in each window.
“Winston, if Diana’s spirit is trying to help us, why did she attack you, Elizabeth and my mother?”
“When were they attacked?”
I shared with him my mother’s lame excuses for her broken wrist and the bandage on Elizabeth’s forehead.
He pursed his lips then firmed them. “I don’t think Diana’s spirit attacked them or me.”
“But you said the cold—”
“Is Diana shielding us from another presence, a presence that made the shutters close in her bedroom, that made the cabinet door hit me.” He tucked his empty tray beneath his arm. “What if the cold is Diana’s love, but the energy that attacks has its source in someone else?”
I love going for solitary drives accompanied by Neil Diamond going full blast while the world around me becomes part of me. I’m a mountain gal born and bred. I don’t understand cities. They don’t speak to me. But give me the wilderness and I come alive.
