Imagine waking up in a house with no running water, when you’re used to a huge tub to soak in every evening. Using the restroom to do your business means squatting over a hole, and scooping water out of a tub with a butter bowl to “flush.”

During my last year of college I had the opportunity to lead a student trip to Thailand, months after the tsunami devastated the coast. I’d spent the better part of a year preparing for this trip, but there’s nothing that can prepare you for the culture shock of living in a different world. Culture shock has been part of my life, so I think I handle it better than most. That was, honestly, one of the reasons I didn’t warn the girls going on the trip about using a squatty potty. I knew that without all of the comforts we were used to living with, the toilet situation was one that would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I will never forget our first, group, squatty potty experience. I’d learned the finer points of using one while living in Russia, but the ones we used in rural Thailand were crude, cinderblock structures. We’d landed in Bangkok as riots were starting, and got out of the city as quickly as we could, which meant no potty breaks. We stopped at their version of a rest stop on the side of the highway and our guide prodded me awake.

“We’re stopping so the women can use the bathroom,” he said, giving the girls nervous glances.

“Oh, so?” My jet lagged brain had forgotten the minor detail of instructing the girls about the potty situation.

“They need to go.” He jerked his head toward the bathrooms. “Do they know-?”

“Ooooooooh.” Light bulbs flash to life.

Part of me cruelly wishes I’d videotaped the introduction of American Girl Meets Squatty Potty. I feel that it would be a great YouTube hit. The girls on this trip, except for me, had never been out of America. Their reaction when I explained that the toilets we would be seeing were holes in the ground with foot grips on the side, if we were someplace fancy, got a lot of slack jaws and wide eyes.

I have no idea why using a squatty potty is so confusing, but on this day, after experiencing a barrage of new things, but I actually had to demonstrate how one would squat to pee. You can see photo evidence to the side. Unfortunately my demonstration wasn’t good enough. Do you see how my arms are stretched out? Well, one of the girls didn’t understand that it was not necessary to hold ones arms straight out and couldn’t figure out how to hold her skirt and extend her arms. To make matters worse, there were lizards inside the bathroom that intimidated most of the girls.

Over my handful of years I’ve had the opportunity to live a variety of places, eat things I never want to eat again (like crickets), and experience some out of this world things. Sure, I’ve gone to foreign countries, but culture shock can happen at home anytime we branch out and go someplace new. I love taking my mom out with me, for example. She says I never fail to show her something she wouldn’t have seen on her own. Our world is full of new experiences, cultures and a variety of people and places in our own backyard.

What’s an out of the normal experience that’s stuck with you? It can be something from everyday life, or a once in a lifetime trip you took to a destination you always wanted to go to. One commenter will win a $10 gift card to Amazon.

It can never be said that Sidney Bristol has had a ‘normal’ life. She is a recovering roller derby queen, former missionary, and tattoo addict. She grew up in a motor-home on the US highways (with an occasional jaunt into Canada and Mexico), traveling the rodeo circuit with her parents. Sidney has lived abroad in both Russia and Thailand, working with children and teenagers. She now lives in Texas where she splits her time between a job she loves, writing, reading and belly dancing. Her debut release entitled Flirting with Rescue will be out later this month from Ellora’s Cave.

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Toys for Tarts: Road Rage

I attended a writing conference last Spring at Asilomar, the beautiful conference ground designed by famed architect, Julia Morgan. We’d had long walks on the beach, brainstorming sessions with other romance writers and craft classes taught by Margie Lawson.

During one of the lunch breaks, we somehow got on the subject of sex toys—vibrators, to be exact. Okay, I’ll admit, I had just published The Stimulus Package, under my erotic pen name, Angela Love. Someone asked me about it, and that set the ball in motion. Ask me about my writing and then expect me to shut up? No way. It started to bend the conversation in a very naughty direction. But hey, we were there to have fun, even if a couple of ladies at our table blushed and could hardly speak.

I’m sure the rest of the two hundred or so attendees were wondering what all the laughing was about. We told stories of things that had gone wrong, what kinds of toys we had bought and how they had been misused. One of my friends told the story about her friend, who was a sex toy sales rep, who happened to use a large purple vibrator in traffic.

This isn’t what you think. She was pleasuring herself, but not in the usual way. She extended it through the sunroof of her car at some guy who had been tailgating her for miles.

I asked for and received permission to use this idea for my third in the series, Toys for Tarts, Book 3, Road Rage. So, while this is based on a real incident, the story is entirely mine.

I like reading humorous sexual escapades because it imitates life. Not everything is the old bump and grind. Things that spice up a relationship between two consenting adults can sometimes be funny. They might even be more memorable.

I’m working on Book 4 now: Occupy Me. My lips are sealed until I get this puppy put to bed. But I am having fun with these light reads—sweet treats for me, and so fun to write.

Here’s an excerpt from Road Rage. The Teri Stanton has just left an office party and escaped an embarrassing incident with the boss’s son, Tim Benson. Her lustful thoughts about him have kept her in this low-paying job longer than she intended. So she has taken a part-time job as a sex education instructor for ESL students on path toward citizenship. She’s about to teach her last class of the semester.

Excerpt, Road Rage:

I checked my watch again. I had just enough time to drop by the Health Care office before my class, to pick up the lesson plan. Tim was absorbing energy from the room of clucking hens, so I made my exit.

Sandy Morgen was the Director of the Health Education program for the county. I breezed in, sure my cheeks still hadn’t deflamed. I was shameless. It didn’t matter one whit.

“Hi Sandy, sorry to be a little late. We had a shower at the office.”

“Oh? Who did you shower with?” She smiled like a pampered palace cat, batting her green eyes.
Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks for letting me guest blog today, Delilah!  I’m Jenna Ives, and I write contemporary erotic romance novellas.  I love novellas, because with so much technology at hand these days (texting, tweeting, e-readers, smart phones, video game players, etc) it seems everyone is developing a shorter attention span.  And novellas are the perfect way to satisfy a romance reader’s appetite for stories without having to make a long-term time commitment!

Since novellas are by definition short, I’ll share my secret for writing erotic novellas with you:  as the story opens, I immediately put my characters into a situation where they either have to have sex for a particular reason (there are many fun ways to do this, and author Leigh Court is my personal favorite for coming up with creative situations) or else create an event where your characters are forced to stay together for a certain plot reason. Voila! Instant tension! And in an erotic romance, that means the sexual sparks fly!

My new novella, Snow White And Her Seven Lovers, was inspired by both Kristen Stewart’s upcoming movie “Snow White And The Huntsman” as well as Julia Roberts’ spring release of “Mirror, Mirror.”  It looks like 2012 is definitely the year of Snow White!

Here’s the blurb for my erotic version of this classic fairy tale, which I’ve written in first-person from our heroine’s point of view:

What’s a girl to do when she wakes up poisoned in the ER and finds that she’s lost her memory, her family, and very nearly her life?

That was me. Three months ago. With no identity, no money, and nowhere to go on the day I was discharged from the hospital, I gratefully accepted my gorgeous ER doctor’s offer to move in with him and his equally gorgeous six friends – the ones who’d found me unconscious in an apple orchard. My plan was to stay only until my memory returned, and I could figure out who I was and if someone really had tried to kill me.

Together with Doc, these were an amazingly diverse bunch of guys, but there was something about each of them that attracted me powerfully enough to want to explore it. The policeman with his clever handcuffs. The cunningly linguistic librarian. The disciplinarian teacher. The virgin computer whiz who loved to play sex games. The engineer who created shotgun orgasms. The wildly imaginative baker.

Becoming intimate with these seven men completed me in ways I suspected discovering my name never would. That is, until the fateful day a man showed up claiming to be my fiancé…

Oooh… conflict and lots of steamy love scenes!  A real page-turner. But by far, my most favorite part of writing this story was coming up with jobs that realistically lent themselves to the characters – Doc is the obvious one (he’s the ER doctor who saves our heroine’s life) but if you read this story, I’d love to hear from you about my choices for the six friends’ occupations J  Grumpy? Dopey? Sleepy? Sneezy? Happy? Bashful? Are the real-life jobs I’ve chosen for these characters believable?

Snow White And Her Seven Lovers is available through amazon.com, bn.com, Smashwords.com, or at my website, www.jennaives.com. 

So…. which fairy tale is your favorite?? And how could we spice it up a little?

Please remember, two contests end tomorrow. Check here for details:
*Win The Baby Dragon Incense Burner Contest (ends Dec 27th)
*Win a $25.00 Amazon.com certificate (ends Dec 27th)

Getting Graded

Having my book reviewed reminds me of my school days and getting graded by my teacher. The educator reads your paper, evaluates it and gives it a mark.

Reviewers do the same for books, but most of the reviewers for romance websites don’t get paid. They’re book lovers who give their precious time to read my book and write up an opinion.

I love getting reviews of my books. Reviewers tell me what they liked about the characters and plot and sometimes they tell me what they dislike. I see reviews as validation that I wrote a good book and as a critique. If reviewers are willing to give their time to publish their comments, I need to pay attention. I can learn and I can improve.

Electronic publishing has increased the numbers of publishers, writers and books on the market and the choices for readers are ever expanding. Given this explosion of available books, I feel fortunate to receive a review. I have books that never been reviewed and that disappointments me. I really like the feedback.

I’d like to share a couple of comments that a reviewer wrote about one of my werewolf tales, Mark of the Moon.

“Occasionally the sentences were a bit stilted.”

“Mark of the Moon is a page turner, gripping the reader from the first page and not letting go.”

I love this kind of feedback, and if I could I’d ask that reviewer to point out every sentence she found stilted. That isn’t possible, but I’ve written a few more books since Mark of the Moon and her comment has stayed with me.

This year I was very fortunate. My book, Mirror Mirror: Nightwing was nominated by The Romance Reviews (TRR) for Best Erotic Paranormal Angels and Demons book for 2011. I was stunned. Short books like Nightwing are rarely nominated for awards. The nominees are selected by the TRR reviewers. I didn’t win, but I was thrilled that my book was remembered and nominated.

So whether the reviewers grade with stars, tombstones, lips or hearts I’m want to thank these wonderful people for all the reviews I have received over the years and the ones I hope to receive in 2012.

I’m looking forward to a great new year and getting good grades.

Thanks so much, Delilah, for letting me take over your blog today. I’m Randi Alexander, I write cowboy erotic romances, and I’m a co-blogger with Delilah at Wild and Wicked Cowboys. We will also be published together in the Cowboy Lust anthology coming from Cleis Press in fall, 2012.

One of my readers sent me this story, and asked me to pass it along. It’s about a young man named Matt whose Christmas story gives us a picture of life on a ranch in 1881. I loved the story, and I hope you’ll enjoy it, too.

Pa never had much compassion for the lazy or those who squandered their means and then never had enough for the necessities. But for those who were genuinely in need, his heart was as big as all outdoors. It was from him that I learned the greatest joy in life comes from giving, not from receiving.

It was Christmas Eve 1881. I was fifteen years old and feeling like the world had caved in on me because there just hadn’t been enough money to buy me the rifle that I’d wanted for Christmas. We did the chores early that night for some reason. I just figured Pa wanted a little extra time so we could read in the Bible.

After supper was over I took my boots off and stretched out in front of the fireplace and waited for Pa to get down the old Bible. I was still feeling sorry for myself and, to be honest, I wasn’t in much of a mood to read Scriptures. But Pa didn’t get the Bible, instead he bundled up again and went outside. I couldn’t figure it out because we had already done all the chores. I didn’t worry about it long though, I was too busy wallowing in self-pity.

Soon Pa came back in. It was a cold clear night out and there was ice in his beard. “Come on, Matt,” he said. “Bundle up good, it’s cold out tonight.” I was really upset then. Not only wasn’t I getting the rifle for Christmas, now Pa was dragging me out in the cold, and for no earthly reason that I could see. We’d already done all the chores, and I couldn’t think of anything else that needed doing, especially not on a night like this. But I knew Pa was not very patient at one dragging one’s feet when he’d told them to do something, so I got up and put my boots back on and got my cap, coat, and mittens. Ma gave me a mysterious smile as I opened the door to leave the house. Something was up, but I didn’t know what. Read the rest of this entry »

Best Erotic Romance Series Debut!

Have you ever tried to herd cats? It’s hard, I tell you.  Getting all those beautiful, headstrong felines to walk in the same direction, to behave and get along…. Whew! Exhausting!

What does herding cats have to do with books?  Well, editing an anthology of erotic romance is a bit like rounding up cats. Finding stories that are beautifully written and complement each other and organizing them in a way that makes the entire book flow naturally is a challenge, to say the least. But it’s a challenge I love and as I was editing my fourth anthology for Cleis Press, I found myself with an added challenge—to not only find stories that blended together well, but to find stories that were the very best of erotic romance.

Best Erotic Romance is the inaugural edition of a new series from Cleis Press. I received so many amazing stories that the challenge became narrowing those wonderful submissions to the seventeen stories I ultimately chose.

Here is my introduction to the collection:

Introduction: Simply the Best

What does it take to be the best? That’s the question I kept in the forefront of my mind as I edited Best Erotic Romance 2012. And so, when I sat down to sift through the submissions, I found myself reading many of the stories two or three times. It’s a complicated process, trying to determine what makes a story the very best of the genre. Obviously, excellent writing and storytelling are key, but I also looked for stories with characters I could believe in and root for. Characters I could fall in love with, just as they were falling in love (or finding ways to stay in love).

I am delighted to present this inaugural collection of Best Erotic Romance, the collection that I hope will set the bar for future editions. These are the stories that touched my heart and ignited my libido, that made me think about the nature of desire and the unpredictability of the human heart. Each of these seventeen stories weaves love and passion so tightly that one cannot be separated from the other. And isn’t that what a lasting relationship is all about? The need for connection and commitment, memories and history—and hot, wanton, uninhibited sex with a partner who knows us better than we know ourselves.

From tales of love (and lust) at first sight, such as Delilah Devlin’s “Drive Me Crazy” and Nikki Magennis’s “Dawn Chorus” to stories of established couples still passionate for each other, such as Andrea Dale’s “Memories for Sale” and Kate Pearce’s “Cheating Time,” the stories in this collection show that true love lasts, real passion never waivers, and lovers who are meant to be will always find their way back to each other. These lovers aren’t afraid of going after what they want, whether it’s long-lost love in “Blame It on Facebook” by Kate Dominic or a hot threesome among a married couple and a female friend in Erobintica’s “Till the Storm Breaks.”

The authors in this collection know that opening one’s heart comes with great risks and often greater rewards and that open communication and a spirit of adventure can make for a scorching sex life. They have created characters who believe all is fair in love and war and who take no prisoners in their quest for emotional and sexual fulfillment. Here you will find lovers exploring their desires in bedrooms, heating things up in the kitchen, splashing around in the bathtub, playing with sex toys, drinking champagne, getting it on in hotel rooms, staying warm in winter cabins, flirting in trucks and bars, making out in the great outdoors, and making love at dawn and midnight—all in the name of that greatest of all human desires: true love.

So, dear reader, I invite you to explore this delicious collection of erotic romance selected especially for you. I think you will find that what makes a story the best of its kind is based on the same intangibles that make people fall in love. It’s magic, I think. And when it comes to love and war, there’s only one thing I know for sure: love wins. Love always wins.

Kristina Wright
In love in Chesapeake, Virginia

This is the kind of book that is a delicious treat at the holidays—or a terrific gift for someone who is new to erotic romance and looking for a sampling of stories. And in that spirit, I would love to send one lucky commenter a copy of Best Erotic Romance! Winner will be selected at noon on Friday, December 23.

Happy holidays to all of you and thanks to Delilah for letting me take over her blog today!

Psst! Remember, continue to post in order to increase your chances to win
The Dragon with a Cup of Joe Contest!

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

‘Tis the Season

‘Tis the season of giving. And it’s still a season of thanksgiving, as well as a season of reflection.

I have done a few things this year outside my comfort zone. I’ve learned a lot, changed a lot, and I’ve met some wonderful people this year. One of them being Delilah. She is down to Earth, open, kind, patient.

I’d started reading her cowboy stories before the Lori Foster Readers and Authors get together in June and when I had the chance to meet her, I zoomed across the room and accosted her. I told her I loved her books and that I’d love to pick her brain some time. She was gracious and offered to sit down with me at breakfast the next morning.

That kind of willing and open kindness is something I find missing a lot in this business and in life in general. I don’t understand it. Delilah let me ask questions and never made me feel like a lesser author just because I didn’t have the right publishing credentials or didn’t know the right people. There was nothing I could do for her in return for her sitting and talking with me.

She’s professional and she’s quick with a smile. Her sister, Myla Jackson, is the same way. Both of these women are incredibly successful yet don’t treat others any different for not being quite so… They gave of their time and their lessons learned. They gave of themselves and in the spirit of giving, that’s something most reserve for the holidays, but they gave it in the middle of the year. They touched me and I know they touched others. We should all strive to be less full of ourselves and willing to talk with, spend time with, and help each other. We should all strive to talk less about ourselves and our successes, and listen more.

These two authors are not the only ones like this. I’ve met others this year who are just as quick to take a moment to talk, to offer their time, to do something that may not benefit them in any way at all but to make someone else smile or feel better.

I do a lot of reflective thinking at this time of year. What could I do better, how could I be a better friend, a better author, a better mother, daughter, wife, a better all around person? I think I know and it starts with saying thank you to Delilah and Myla for showing me the kind of author/person I want to be toward others in this business.

Throughout the holiday season this year, I’ve been emailing people I’ve met in this business to thank them for their friendship, to thank them for any help they’ve given me, to tell them I miss them, that I love their books, and in some of my guest posts I am doing it, too. Just like in this one.

What about you? Have you told those that mean something to you or that have come into your life and changed you in some way, thank you?

Of course, now, I get to plug in a bit about my upcoming Samhain Publishing release, Twisted Up. It’ll be available on December 20th for purchase, however it is available for pre-order now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Samhain Publishing.

One rope. Three days. And two hearts on the line.

Justin has had enough. Ella, the woman who healed his broken heart, has been cancelling on him for two months straight. Sure, she’s busy with her job, which has her traveling far and wide. But that never stopped her from sharing nights of trivia, long conversations and blazing hot sex—until now. Truth to tell, he misses their easy friendship, the way her sighs fill his ear as he fills her body.

What he can’t figure out is, what’s changed?

At work, Ella finds it easy to talk to rooms full of strangers. Once back at her lonely apartment, though, she’s back to her painfully shy self—until Justin. Their chance meeting grew over the months into a year-long affair, but she can’t shake the feeling that rejection and pain are just around the corner. Best thing to do? End it now, before their intimacy digs too deep.

Suddenly he’s at her door with a length of neon-green rope and a naughty proposition, daring her to say no. Just how good could it be? There’s only one way to find out.

Product Warnings: The sheets are tangled, the hat is crumpled, and the jeans are worn low on the hips. The cowboy is hot, determined, and helpless in the face of bunny slippers. Readers may need extra batteries to get this one out of their system.

For more information, please visit my website or blog, and sign up for my newsletter. You can also find me on Twitter and Facebook.

I want to thank Delilah for having me! I wish you all a very happy holiday season.