I’ll be back tomorrow! In the meantime, welcome Ari Thatcher… ~DD

Delilah was kind enough to let a few of us come play here while she’s away. I have to admit I’m so busy drooling over her covers I can’t concentrate on what I wanted to say!

Dontcha hate that? Have you met a guy in real life that was just so perfect to look at, you couldn’t speak? Or worse, you do speak and something just awful comes out of your mouth?

In high school I injured my knee and had to go to the ER to have it looked at. The doctor was to die for—young and yummy! He asked what the problem is and I told him, “I hurt my knee and Mom called the doctor and he said to come in and have it x-rated.”

Dear universe, swallow me now.

I’m not usually so eloquent around good-looking men. My normal response is, “Huh?” It’s truly why I keep my hair blonde. A quick smile, hair toss and giggle and I’m good again. They give me a knowing nod and go on their way.

I have no trouble putting these guys down on paper. The saying goes “write what you love”. And oh, I love to look! Living in Southern California I meet enough in a day to keep me writing for years.

Which must be why I have to write. There I can be as bold and brassy as I like. Flirt, tease, and walk away. All those things I wish I’d said come back and live on the page, where my hero has to convince the heroine she needs him desperately.

Thank heavens for sexy romance, where love is the way we wish it could be and men are the way we want them to be. Thank heavens for romance covers, even the ones we only read at home for fear of being seen.

Now, I know I came here for a reason. I’m sure I had something really intelligent to say. While I try and remember you can enjoy my latest cover hero, Kyle, and read about the woman who has him begging for mercy.

Kyle’s Redemption
By Ari Thatcher
Available at Ellora’s Cave

Six years ago, Lily Astor looked forward to establishing herself in the Los Angeles art world. In one painfully public moment, those dreams were shattered. Now she has the chance to try again, but the invitation to exhibit comes from a gallery owned by Kyle Ventura. The man who should have cleared her name.

After a night of eyebrow-singeing sex, Kyle realizes who Lily is, and his role in her downfall. Now, as his heart falls deeper for Lily, he needs to make amends. But Lily doesn’t want his help, just his body.

For the first time in his life, sex isn’t enough for Kyle. He wants to show Lily he’s not the man he was six years ago. But first, he has to prove it to himself.

While I’m away, I let my friends come out to play. Welcome Ann Cory… ~DD

A few months back, I couldn’t wait to show hubby my new covers. Three gorgeous covers that had one very common theme: they all depicted two men with one woman. I didn’t actually think about it at the time, I just always feel like a kid at Christmas when I get new cover art. He also likes being the first to see them. Or at least he always did before. This time he had a different expression. His brow went up and then he crossed his arms.

I looked to the screen and then back to him and asked, “Don’t you like them?”

He cleared his throat and grumbled, “What’s up with the extra guy on each of the covers?”

I felt my cheeks redden, and then I chuckled lightly. “Well, they’re ménage stories.”

He clicked on the “upcoming books” part of my website where he proceeded to read the blurbs. When he finished, he gave me a quizzical look. “How come it takes two guys to satisfy these women? Are they high maintenance or something?”

“They’re fantasy,” I said, and watched his lips curl into a smirk.

“I see. So, is that your fantasy?”

Wow. I felt put on the spot.

I explained that it’s all fiction. That if he remembered correctly, I wrote horror and erotic horror before I ever wrote erotic romance. I wrote about a lot of things that weren’t my fantasies. They were stories in my head. In fact some were based on nightmares and irrational fears. Some of them scared me. When I started to write erotic romance some stories did incorporate a bit of my fantasies. And sure, most stories there are pieces of me within one or more of the characters. Traits and quirks of mine. Insecurities and flaws.

I gave him one hell of a spiel, all the while knowing he was only half listening.

When I finished, he asked again if it was my fantasy. I said I was quite content and that he was all the man I needed. Which is true. Far as I’m concerned, one guy is more than enough work, and I wouldn’t know what to do with another one. But of course I didn’t go into that. I’d said what he wanted to hear.

He then turned his attention back to the covers and said they were cool, gave me a hug, and told me he was proud of me.

Writing ménage is somewhat new for me, and I have to admit I’m enjoying it more than I probably should. Is it fantasy? Yes. Is it my fantasy? No. Well, okay, the thought does come to mind when we get into an argument. Instead of the hunky knight to come rescue me and whisk me off to a fabulous castle where I get to wear glamorous clothes and be waited on, I did consider two alpha hotties stealing me away and spoiling me beyond belief. But then I look into my hubby’s blue eyes and am reminded of the incredible thing we have, and how he truly is all the man I need.

Though, I might be tempted by a shifter. *wink*

~Ann Cory

While I’m away, I let my friends come out to play. Welcome Lexi from Romance Writer by Night… ~DD

I’ve got a confession to make.

I used to hate Valentine’s Day.

That’s a horrible thing for a romance writer to admit, but it’s true. This whole season, stretching from the day after Christmas until Valentine’s Day, is the season of romance, right? Well, it’s not so easy to stay festive when you’re single. I’ve got a birthday right before Valentine’s Day, too, just to add that extra kick. It was a triple whammy: no midnight kiss, another year older and then another dateless Valentine’s Day! Yay, me! How could I think of romance when the whole world was a huge reminder that I was single?

I’ve come to realize, though, that hating Valentine’s Day and singledom in general is no way to go through life, especially as a not-yet-married romance writer. If ever there was a time to make lemonade from the proverbial lemons, it’s right now. So I’ve turned my attitude around, and I’ve discovered that the lemonade has been good for my writing, too. Here’s how.

1. Window Shopping for Heroes

Checking guys out. It’s one of the biggest perks of the single life. Not that women in relationships can’t check guys out, of course they can. No harm in looking, right? Especially if they’re looking for heroes to star in their stories. Hey, they can’t all look like the SO or the DH.

But there’s a certain shameless freedom that we single ladies can bring to the table. Even if all we do is look, the knowledge that we could do more than that—flirt, swap numbers, fly to Vegas for a wild weekend culminating in an Elvis-themed wedding—makes the whole project more exciting. So when we check guys out, we can do it with a dual purpose. That guy across the room might have the perfect look for our next story, or he might turn out to be our real-life leading man. Wouldn’t that be an awesome “how we met” story?

2. Being Positively Wishful

It’s not easy to think romantic thoughts when your one of your eight bags of groceries has exploded in the parking lot, leaving you alone, in the rain, to put everything back together so you can get it up all those stairs to your home. That’s not easy at all. (Don’t ask how I know.) But it does pay off. Before I learned to love Valentine’s Day, I’d have lots of colorful words to share with the parking lot and my groceries and my nonexistent boyfriend about how wonderful it was to be lugging two weeks’ worth of food all the way from the car to the front door. Now I’ve seen the light.

Today, when I’m faced with one of those single-girl challenges like leaping across the rainy parking lot without dropping any of my single-serving frozen foods, I ask myself this question: How would I rather have this work out? Then I let my imagination run with the idea.

Maybe a hot stranger hops out of his car with an umbrella. Maybe I chase a wayward can of corn down the sidewalk until it rolls onto the patio of his studio apartment. Maybe, while I’m huddled beneath my raincoat on his patio, rearranging my groceries, I catch a glimpse of him through the sliding glass door. Maybe he’s a good-looking artist, the lean, intense type, adding the finishing touches to a painting … of an equally lean, intense male model … who sees me on the patio. Now that’s nice, isn’t it? Even though, in reality, I haven’t left my pile of spilled groceries in the parking lot, far from my front door, I’ve got a nice story idea in my head and a smile on my face. That won’t put my stuff back in the bag or stop the rain, but that hey-it-could-happen feeling does make the heavy lifting more bearable.

3. Making the War Stories into Your Stories

Into every woman’s single life wanders the occasional Evil Ex-Boyfriend.

Okay, maybe “evil” isn’t the right word. After all, none of my exes has plotted world domination, or built a weather machine designed to melt the polar ice cap, or re-animated the dead. At least not that I’m aware of. But Evil Ex-Boyfriend has a certain ring to it that Amoral, Self-Absorbed Creep doesn’t.

Thoughts of the Evil Ex have a way of resurfacing in a single girl’s mind at this time of year. Well, that’s fine. Now those thoughts have a place to go: the WIP (Work-In-Progress). I used my memories—the despair, the blame, the shock, all that great stuff—to add detail to my heroine’s breakup with her own Evil Ex. The more I thought about it, the more detail I could weave in, from the icy prickle of anger to the smug expression on Mr. Evil’s face. My heroine’s Evil Ex became someone who felt real without becoming a copy of my real exes, and getting those feelings onto the page made me feel better about surviving that pain.

I’m not a huge believer in the New Year’s Resolution; I’ve got some long-term commitment issues, which I’m sure are totally unrelated to my current single status. But I am determined to take advantage of the single life, both the perks and the unhappy memories, as Valentine’s Day approaches. Singledom’s been pretty good to me, all things considered, and now it’s making me a better writer, too.

What’s not to love about that?

While I’m away, I let my friends come out to play. Welcome Michelle Polaris…~DD

First off, I want to thank Delilah for allowing me to kidnap her blog while she’s away and so help pursue my plan for total world domination. Oops, did I say that out loud? Sorry Delilah-faithful, I’ll have to get back to you on the particulars of my plan, as its details are still quite fuzzy. I’m such a tease. Instead, I’m here today thankful for having a chance to pimp my book, Bound Odyssey, released by Ellora’s Cave this past fall.

But before I jump into shameless self-promotion, I wanted to share a few thoughts I had about why I love erotic romance. One thing fiction does stupendously is allow readers to a place to explore or connect to emotions or ideas in a less overwhelming way. Sexuality and all its flavors is a basic component of our species, but for many it’s difficult to acknowledge. Especially its less mainstream expression. Having a place to connect to our feelings about the varieties of expression is crucial if we’re to avoid crushing our own complex identities. A story that explicitly touches on emotion, relationship and sexuality is a mother load for doing this. As a writer of BDSM romance this strikes me as particularly true.

I am also a fantasy and science fiction reader by nature. I love world building. I adore speculative fiction. They provide the chance, just like erotic romance does for issues of sexuality, to explore a lot of provocative topics without triggering our human tendency to shut down about unpleasant realities. For instance, the threat to the environment. How sexy is it to tune into the news and listen to the debate about global warming, the melting polar icecaps and rising sea levels? Not too sexy. Or to issues about bigotry and violence in our world? I don’t see Cosmo covering these topics in their features about increasing sexual satisfaction in relationships. Not sexy.

Now is about the time I circle back around to my erotic romance novel, Bound Odyssey. It is a futuristic, post-apocalyptic, Femdom, m/m/f ménage which also includes male domination elements. Okay, maybe not for everyone, although it’s getting kick-ass reviews. But what I wanted to build for my readers was a way to reflect on current issues of environmental threat and the politics of hate, while allowing them the eternal hopefulness that comes out of lovers healing each others’ emotional wounds and finding their happily ever after. Life can be painful, but painting a picture of hope alongside dark reality is what keeps folks going. I better shut up now and let you read the blurb.
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While I’m away, I let my friends come out to play. Welcome Shayla Kersten… ~DD

Imagination is such a quirky thing. Where would we be without it? Probably extinct. *cackle* Human imagination has given us inventions from rudimentary weapons of survival to spaceflight. And in the process, unleashed the written word on a world curious to know everything from vampires to alternate realities to aliens.

I’ve been in love with the idea of space since I was six years old watching the original Star Trek on an old black and white television. What an amazing thing for someone to dream of! And then there we were…humans…men from earth catapulting into space atop massive rockets, walking on the moon. I still get chills remembering that fateful July day and those words—“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. I just knew the future held the starship Enterprise, alien creatures and amazing explorations. I wanted so bad to be part of it, to explore space, to go where no man—or woman—had gone before. *le sigh*

Alas, being blind as a bat ruled out anything to do with flight. A lack of ability with real science limited my options. The closest I came to my dream was the military. I mean, the Federation was a military of sorts, although it espoused peace. After all, they used military ranks, right?

So instead of exploring outer space, I turned to the space between my ears. My head was full of ideas for all kinds of stories. I wrote stories of cops and vampires, of men loving men and happily ever after. But I hesitated when it came to scifi. I had some ideas but not a clear enough picture to explore a universe of my own creation. Until last year.

In a chat, our most adorable Delilah asked readers what stories they’d like to see from her or from me. Brandy W spoke up. She said she wanted to see something from me with vampires and angels. Hmmm… Okey dokie. My brain did a double take. I already have a vampire series—Eternity—and I still needed to finish the last book for it. But it was an interesting idea. Okay. I filed the prompt—vamps and angels—away for later. And went on with the stories I had in process.

A few months later a lot of buzz came around about space opera being big. You know the type of story, Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly… Cowboys in space kind of thing. Okay… My brain took a left turn. Vamps, angels, space… Vamps, angels, space… And the next thing you know, ANGEL MOON is born. The first in a trilogy of stories with more to possibly come. I’m already into book two and book three is nagging me for attention. Hopefully, the words will flow as fast as the ideas are now! *cackle*

ANGEL MOON
By Shayla Kersten
Copyright © SHAYLA KERSTEN, 2010
Now available at Ellora’s Cave
For all of Shayla’s Ellora’s Cave’s book, check out her page
For more about Shayla check out her website

What the story’s all about:
Terra offers sanctuary to Angellum and Virkola. Unknown to the natives, a truce exists there. To Terrans, the two species exist as myths. One is a frail winged creature from religious texts. The other, a demon of the night, living off blood. Both are far from the truth…

Sorin thought sanctuary was the answer to their problems. Terra with its plentiful creatures, full of fresh blood and off limits to the millennia long war with the Angellum—who wouldn’t think it paradise? Except paradise comes at a high price. Claiming a bounty on a renegade angel hasn’t ended up the way he planned.

Teo loves his ship, his life in space, but he loves Sorin more. The plan seems sound but the bounty is a fraud and now the price is on him and Sorin. He’ll make the best of the rest of his life with Sorin, even if it were only a few weeks.

But when hope appears from an unexpected source, both men grab chance by the wings.

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

“You and your fucking bright ideas!” Teo dodged behind a stack of crates as heat sizzled past his leg. The acrid smell of ozone raised the hair on his neck. Popping out from behind his cover, he squeezed off a burst of return fire. Sweat matted his hair and kept trickling down his forehead and into his eyes. The thin atmosphere made every breath a chore. He rubbed his coat sleeve across his face but the water-resistant material just moved the sweat around and added grit to the mix.
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I sold the first two books of a new series to the Berkley Books Heat line (they’re part of the Penguin group)!

My dream publisher!

They publish the likes of Angela Knight, Lora Leigh, Lauren Dane, Emma Holly, Jaci Burton, Maya Banks, and my BFF-cruise-buddy, Sasha White, to name a few of my favorites! And now me! Can’t say more about the stories just yet, but be thinking about Vikings on another world. The title of the first one is tentatively called Beloved Captor.

Can you tell I’m excited? It will take a day or two to come down off the high and realize that now I have to write the books. And they are long so—ouch! You know me. Economy of words. Novellas. Short stories. I haven’t written anything full-length since last year when I turned in the last of Dark Realm books, but I can do this. The world I’m creating is richly detailed, the hero to die for. Of course, the sex will rock!

Yippee!

First, thanks to everyone who posted or sent me an email about yesterday’s release, Unforgiven. I’m thrilled you like it so much, but I did tell you Cutter would be hot as hell!

Tomorrow through next Monday, I’ll be out of town again, so I invited some ladies to entertain you while I’m gone. No fans, feathers or shiny poles, just their very wicked imaginations! Here’s the lineup:

Thursday—Shayla Kersten
Friday—Michelle Polaris
Saturday—Lexi, from Romance Writer at Night
Sunday—Ann Cory
Monday—Ari Thatcher

Be sure to drop by and check out their wares! 😉

And where will I be? The ladies in RWA’s Omaha chapter invited my sister, Elle James, and I to run a plotting bootcamp over the weekend. So we will be on high octane all weekend long, trying to corral 17 active imaginations. It’ll be a blast, and thank the stars we don’t have last weekend’s weather to contend with on the drive!

Today, I should hear some news. If it happens, I’ll be sure to come back here and let you know what it is. I swear I don’t mean to be coy, but I can’t tell until it’s wrapped up in a pretty pink bow. And I just can’t keep the excitement to myself, so I have to hint!