First, I have to get thank you’s aside. “For what?” you might ask.

My straight-to-Kindle experiment, Pleasing Sir, is a success due entirely to your support. I let you know when the book was out—you bought it, wrote reviews, clicked on tags—and it rose high enough on the erotica chart that others who don’t know me as well took a chance and ordered it too!

Then there’s Four Sworn, which is still on MBaM’s top ten list and is sitting pretty in the Kindle store too!

I’m hoping you will all work some magic for my print book, Darkness Captured, which released this week. Remember, if you’ve read it and are moved to tell somebody about it, please post a review on Amazon’s or Barnes & Noble’s websites. They do matter! You can influence whether some other reader decides to buy it.

So, back to business. I finished Breaking Leather this week! If you liked Four Sworn, you will love this one as well. The Kinzie brothers kidnap their dream girl and there’s tons of sexy persuasion goin’ on to get the girl to say yes! I’ve shared some sneak peeks with the folks on my yahoo group, and they seem eager to read more. 😉

I’m working through the final typeset pages of Ravished by a Viking. I can’t wait to share more of the story with you! And I have some fun things planned that have to do with the launch of that book. So stay tuned!

I’m back to writing the the follow-up story. Chapter One gave me an inordinate amount of grief. But I worked and worked to get it right. What do you think about a proud Viking who’s been sold into sexual slavery? Uh-huh. Thought so.

This next week I’ll have little ones underfoot, but I still hope to blast through Chapter Two and Three. Wish me luck! And thanks again, chicas!

“The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy
in the back seat of a Dodge Dart.”
Lisa Alther

I pulled this from my The Goddess Within mini-book. Seemed like a good jumpstart to a conversation. Agree or disagree? What constitutes romantic love?

The cliche would be chocolate and flowers. A slow, gentle wooing. I have to admit, I’ve never—not once—experienced that sort of love in my life. I think that’s due to my personality. I always preferred to be “handled”, if ya know what I mean. I tend to challenge guys. Even if they’ve been that romantic man with someone else, they’re the rough and ready guy for me, or they don’t last long.

What’s been your experience? What’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to you? By your definition!

The newsletter contest (see September 16th’s blog for the details) continues until the 30th!!

Background Work
By Christine Price

So, I probably didn’t have to come up with the Society for In Darkness Bound. (For those who haven’t had a chance to pick up a copy quite yet, I won’t ruin any surprises by telling you that the Society is a shadowy organization that investigates the disappearance of our main character, Chris). But having “a cop” investigate everything just didn’t sit right for me. What do I know about police procedures, besides what I’ve seen on TV? And really, in a paranormal thriller-romance, do “mundane” authorities really work? Are they enough, especially when encountering all of the wonderful, creepy strangeness that can stalk you from the darkness?

Hence, The Society.

Don’t get me wrong, the focus of the book is our main characters, Chris, Vance and Simon, as they try to navigate the dim hallways and deep-seated psychosis of their captor. But I felt like I needed something more. Something to flesh out my world and offer that extra layer of “WTF is going on here?” The Society gave me a chance to do that. I got two very cool secondary characters out of the bargain as well as another way to express myself through a mysterious conglomerate of people that’s not inherently evil (maybe).

I found as I was writing In Darkness Bound that I came up with a lot of background material for the Society. Most of which doesn’t make it into the book. While the romance was forefront in my mind, I had this elaborate background slowly forming. Not including it, but knowing it was there, was like having their extra support net while I was scaling the trapeze of my first novel-length project. I felt like I had a brand new world I’d constructed, though the book was set entirely in New York.

It also gave me the perfect excuse to expand from a single book into a budding series, but I’ll get into that at another time.

Some of my favourite authors seem to have done the same thing, and it’s always drawn me deeper into the world. Take Sherrilyn Kenyon for example. In her first book, Fantasy Lover, you had no idea that she was going to delve into the world of the Dark Hunters, save for the barest hint when Kyrian walked by. Yet, I have a feeling that she had the entire cosmology at least marginally planned out when she was writing it and it made the book so much more interesting for me in retrospect. Or even Frank Herbert in Dune. You learn next-to-nothing about the Bene Gesserit (save that they’re evil old women with precognisance and a serious love of eugenics), but it’s everything left unsaid that makes them appealing and mysterious. By not going into great detail about them, Herbert gives them power, because nothing is more powerful than your reader’s imagination.

What do you think? Can you tell when an author has done the background work, even when it might not go into great detail? Does it entice you? Pull you in? Make you want to learn more? Or is it just a little irritating when they don’t just spill their guts and tell you what’s going on?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Data Collection by Dalhousie, Dr. Donna L.

Patient 77 Reclassified to staff status. Useful, malleable.

Confined in a sterile research facility and treated like a lab rat, Chris is alone and terrified. His special powers are his only escape, allowing him to psychically connect with other patients.

Alone in his cell for longer than he can remember, Vance is hungry. When newcomer Chris makes a mental connection, Vance is intrigued and soon wants more than just conversation.

Chris and Vance seek comfort with each other, and with Simon—the only staff member who’s shown them a hint of compassion. Their relationships develop during stolen moments, and they turn their thoughts to escape. But as Dr. Dalhousie’s madness spirals, more than cell walls threaten to keep them apart…

BUY HERE

I spent yesterday with my cousin and his partner, walking around downtown Hot Springs. We had lunch at a tea room I hadn’t known existed. Went to an art exhibit in one of the old, converted bath houses. Trailed through a bath house that was converted to a museum, and then went shopping at an antique store. I came home with a lithograph, a print, costume books, and a silver and mother-of-pearl necklace. Lovely day all in all. On our way home, I took them to a catfish restaurant. They’re from Seattle and hadn’t had that southern fried delicacy—if you can imagine that! Then of course, since we were so hot and tired from all the exercise, we turned on the night light and jumped into the pool for a swim.

I was in bed by ten o’clock. And awake and posting this at three!

I’m thinking I must have hit at least three of those “Simple Delights” from my mini-book yesterday. Here’s another: checking the stats of Pleasing Sir.

Thanks to everyone who bought the book and made my “straight-to-Kindle” experiment a success. I’ll be doing that again!

Wynter selected a winner from among yesterday’s posters, and that person is…Brandy W! Brandy, Wynter will send you a book later today! ~DD

The newsletter contest (see September 16th’s blog for the details) continues until the 30th. Today’s blog contest winner is posted at the bottom of this blog. Thanks to everyone who played and wished me well! ~DD

Is First Person Too Close for Comfort?

by Wynter Daniel

Thanks to Delilah for inviting me to guest blog here today. I am in awe of the staggering number of great erotic romances she has published.

Like most erotic romances, all my stories are written in third person. This is a given for most authors. I have written stories in first person, years ago when I dabbled in the young adult market. Most YA stories are presented in first person, although I’m not exactly sure why. I guess first person brings the reader in closer with the protagonist and so many teenagers want so desperately to feel a part of something, even if that something is fiction.

But erotic romance and erotica are a whole different animal from YA. As a writer, putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and expressing intimate sexual expression is definitely easier when those expressions are happening to him, to her, to John or to Nancy. When you inject me, I or my, it all feels so personal. Same goes for readers, I think.

So imagine my surprise when I started writing a short erotica story in first person. Sometimes a character just comes to me and I have to immediately work on the story. I wrote the first scene of Customer Service—my upcoming Exotica release with Ellora’s Cave—in one sitting, not even very aware that it was in first person.

I went back the next day and tried to rewrite it in third person, but it was as if my muse had turned his back on me. The scene fell flat. So I went back to the original and kept going. It turned into one of those pieces that practically wrote itself. I suppose sometimes the story takes over and the author is merely the channel.

The heroine is a professional mystery shopper, someone who tests customer service in stores and restaurants, a job I have dabbled with on occasion over the past five years. Maybe that’s part of the reason it felt so natural to write in first person. (Not that I have EVER had an experience similar to my protagonist!)

Customer Service is also more erotica than my usual erotic romance.

But you be the judge. Customer Service releases on September 30. Here’s a little about it:

Mystery shopper Carly Weber’s husband divorced her for a snooty sales woman, leaving Carly with a bruised and battered self-image. When she evaluates a new sex toy and lingerie store, she finds much more than kinky gear. One by one and then together, two hunky salesmen pleasure her and give her the best customer service of her life, restoring her confidence in the process.

You’ll find an excerpt HERE.

Comment on my post and I will enter you in a drawing to win my last EC Quickie, Getting Even with Warren.

From DD: The winner of the blog contest prize package is (by random number generator)…Natalie! Natalie, be sure to email me with your snail mail address. Congrats!

What is space opera?

Ask a few fans, and you’re most likely to hear a different answer from each person. Space opera, when the term was first coined in the 40’s, was meant as an uncomplimentary jab at bad sci-fi, a comparison to the radio soap operas of the time. By the 60’s and 70’s, space opera had come to be associated with sci-fi adventure novels, and as time has worn on, the original pejorative sting has faded away almost entirely.

A highly scientific sampling of opinions (from my friends who happened to be paying attention to Twitter when I asked) yielded up the following thoughts about what space opera means to fans these days:

piratenami
Probably not the correct definition, but to me, it’s sci-fi that’s less about the tech than the characters, relationships and adventures.

impossibly
Dramatic music composed only with the percussive properties of the space bar.
—
Seriously, space is vast, awe-inspiring, and boring as hell. Space opera uses human elements to highlight the first two.

pezazul
Good science fiction 🙂 Science fiction with well developed characters that you can relate to.

And when it was revealed that I was writing about the connection between space opera and romance:

peroty
OH! Then clearly my response is “an orgy set to the Imperial March!”

impossibly
The Fifth Element: a good example both of what I consider space opera, and how to choreograph an orgy.

When I try to put it together as a concept, I think I come down to a lot of the same themes. Space opera, to me, is generally character-driven, frequently focusing on unlikely protagonists who find themselves in larger-than-life situations. It tends to play to the underdog archetypes, the damaged or reluctant heroine who wins in the end, not despite her flaws, but so many times because of the humanity those flaws lend to the otherwise vast, awe-inspiring, and ultimately cold universe.

I’d argue that the space western genre, rolicking adventure stories where a space ship replaces the trusty steed, is firmly a part of the space opera family. Firefly is probably the most popular recent example, but nobody is likely to forget the place that Star Wars has in that company. In contrast, as my friend mentioned above, the slick grandeur and messy future sprawled out for us in The Fifth Element is every bit as much a space opera, complete with actual opera.

Of course, there have also been more ambitious, and literal interpretations.

So, how does that relate to romance?

The themes in space opera tend to be huge. Saving the universe, or at least their own small part of it, is often the grudging lot of the space opera hero. Reluctant or unlikely, your space opera protagonists are often fringe dwellers; criminals with a heart of gold, idealistic young men and women who believe in doing what’s right, even if it’s dangerous. It’s a common bond that space opera shares with romance, where the bad boy or girl is almost always driven by a greater cause, or a personal demon they can’t shed.

The science in space operas isn’t always, or even generally, the focus. Small groups of flawed people navigate tense situations, and depending on the story, the technology can be integral to the plot, or shiny window-dressing, a costume drama set in a nebulous future. I love space opera for many of the same reasons that I like period romances; the details it adds to the world around the characters, the chance to see themes of love, loyalty, and adventure in another situation that lets them shine.  In The Balance of Silence, the trauma that Ducks faces is a purely human one, and the story could easily have been recast in a contemporary setting, without losing he and Riv’s essential struggle to find a life after violent tragedy, and the love they stumble into along the way.

Space opera also gives you a great chance to play with expectations about sex, gender, and social mores. Most of the characters in our Ylendrian Empire stories are bisexual, with some skewing the scale towards gay or straight, and one of the founding races defaults to gender neutral, shifting to more masculine or feminine aspects as they wish.  Lois McMaster Bujold, as an offshoot of her incredibly popular Miles Vorkosigan series, wrote Ethan of Athos, about a planet where the population is exclusively genetically male, and what happens when Ethan is elected to travel off-world and first meets and interacts with women.

I find the genre so appealing because I like romance that makes the same old tropes seem fresh. I like sci-fi that grounds itself in people. I like adventure, and life on a grander scale. I like seeing that no matter how far out into the universe we go, there’s always the push to go farther. A good space opera is about the people who inhabit it, and I think the best of them are all about the romance of life in the stars.

Recommended authors and books:

The Balance of Silence by S. Reesa Herberth and Michelle Moore
The Liaden Series by Steve Miller and Sharon Lee
The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

Recommended movies and TV:
Firefly
Star Wars
The Fifth Element

~-~-~
S. Reesa Herberth is the co-author of “The Balance of Silence”, a m/m space opera romance, just released by Samhain Publishing. You can read more about the Ylendrian Empire at their website, or more about Reesa at her personal blog.

I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn’t last long.
~ Shelley Winters

I feel like I’ve been away a very long time, but I haven’t gone anywhere. I tell you, I’m addicted to my blog. If I don’t start the day with a new post (of my own!), it’s like I woke up in someone else’s bed. Icky. Disoriented. Ooh. I feel a story coming on.

So I didn’t get to go to Lora Leigh’s big party. Everyone who went is sending messages to each other saying what a nice time they had, and I know the experience is like meeting a sister you never knew because you have EVERYTHING in common—or at least a love of books. I really hate that I missed it.

I wish I could say that I spent the time I was supposed to be gone working productively on writing the stories I have looming, but I can’t. In the back of my mind, I had set apart those days for play, and there was no reprogramming me. Didn’t help that I felt like crap too.

Fun stuff did happen though. Like until today I was #1, #6 and #10 on Samhain’s MBaM site after Four Sworn released. (That’ll change as soon as the new releases come out today!) And Pleasing Sir is cooking along on Kindle. I have a brand new obsession—hitting the refresh key on the sales reports on Kindle. Seriously, thanks to everyone who bought the books. I have serious cash flow issues coming up—something fun to add to my website that will cost me a bundle, but that I hope will add to your enjoyment of my new series starting in January.

In the meantime, I’m ramping up for the release of Darkness Captured next week, and I will be starting a countdown contest on Thursday to celebrate. If you want to win something, you better be paying attention!

Don’t you love today’s quote? Now, there was a woman who lived with no apologies for her excesses in men or food.