Have you ever looked at your significant other and thought, geez, that guy needs a makeover? And if they did, what would you change?

This is my heroine’s dilemma in my August release, REDEEMING THE ROGUE. The story begins in London, England in 1881 and moves across the Atlantic to Washington, D.C. Michael Rafferty is a sexy Irishman who is most comfortable in London’s dark underbelly, ferreting out violent Fenians (a group desiring Independence for Ireland) in the hopes of finding the one responsible for the bomb that killed his family. His black hair is unfashionably long and shaggy, his wardrobe is not that of the aristocracy, and he has no need for knowing about the fourteen types of forks and eleven types of spoons on a well-laid Victorian table.

However, when the British minister assigned to Washington D.C. turns up dead. Rafferty believes the one responsible is the man he’s been chasing. The Home Office decides the best way to catch a murderer is for Rafferty to temporarily assume the position of British minister and head of Washington’s ligation. He just doesn’t exactly look the part.

Enter Lady Arianne Chambers, who for reasons of her own, agrees to mold Rafferty into an acceptable diplomat. While they cross the Atlantic she modifies his appearance, teaches him etiquette – that is, when he shows up for lessons – and teaches him to dance in a sort of reverse Pygmalion.

Little did she suspect that Rafferty was transforming her as well. Together they face Washington society, find themselves involved in the assassination of President Garfield, and are forced to defend themselves against charges of treason.

So, my question for you is…if you could change your significant other, what would it be? His hair? His weight? His clothes? His manners?

Let’s talk and I’ll send one person leaving a comment a copy of REDEEMING THE ROGUE.

Donna MacMeans
www.DonnaMacMeans.com

“[Redeeming the Rogue] is pure joy; funny, sexy and exciting.” 4.5 TOP PICK! Romantic Times Bookreviews

“Irish rebellion, smuggled guns, and the assassination of American president James Garfield form a lively backdrop for this sweet, sexy, and smartly told Victorian romance.” — Publishers Weekly

The winner of yesterday’s One-Day-Only Contest is at the bottom of this post!
Thanks, everyone, for playing! ~DD

Sexual Tension in Books

by Sayde Grace

Hello everyone! First let me just say a huge thank you to Delilah for letting me take over today!! I’m really excited to be here! Today I’m going to talk about different forms of sexual tension. A few months ago I did an online chat where I talked about adding emotion to your sex scenes. During the chat one of my side topics was sexual tension. Since then I have started a new manuscript where the sexual tension is thick enough to cut with a butter knife.

There are many ways to add sexual tension. Such as adding more serious conflicts between the main characters or on the other end of the spectrum having the characters have no conflicts except wanting each other can add tension. I prefer to have my characters bickering. Now, I was once told that bickering isn’t an element strong enough to build a plot on. That’s true, however using that as a character trait is different. Having a couple with a major plot is your main concept but giving them a trait where when near each other they bicker can create friction between them. That friction can be just the beginning to passion.

That is just one way to create sexual tension. Some authors keep characters touching. A stroke of a hand down an arm will do it. Sometimes the gentle press of lips near flesh but never touching. And even a certain glance will create tension. Little gestures go a long way in tying characters together with readers.

Adding an emotional element to any form of creating sexual tension will draw your readers deeper into the relationship. As a reader I know that what ties me to a character is how something affects that character emotionally. When that character is fighting with the other how does she feel? What are her hidden emotions? By bringing those hidden emotions to your readers they will connect your readers to your characters.

Those emotions can be presented in the smallest ways. Just a thought here or there. A slight sigh. A cuss. A blink. Those little actions can reveal emotions that are behind the sexual tension.

What are things you look for as a reader when it comes to tension,
relationships, or traits?

The winner (by random number generator) is…Christy M! Christy, email me with your address so I can get your package into the mail! Congrats!

For those rest of you, remember, the Fugly Ring Contest continues!

Myla Jackson’s Cookin’ up Some Summer Fun!

I’m getting tired of the same-ol’-same-ol’ when it comes to recipes and cooking. And as hot as it’s been I’m looking for something that will give me fresh interest in eating meals. So I went online and found these two recipes and I’m going to try them today.

The first is a recipe for Bruschetta, a light appetizer I learned to pronounce while in Italy last March (hint: the ‘ch’ is pronounces with a hard ‘c’). I had some amazing Bruschetta in Venezia (for those who haven’t had the fortune to go to Italy, that’s what they call Venice). Okay, so here’s the recipe. Let me know what you think.

Roma Tomato Bruschetta
• 6 roma tomatoes, chopped
• 3 cloves minced garlic
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup fresh basil (no stems)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 French baguette
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions
1. Preheat the oven on broiler setting.
2. In a large bowl, combine the roma tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, basil, salt, and pepper. Allow it to sit for 10 minutes.
3. Cut the baguette into 3/4-inch slices. On a baking sheet, arrange the baguette slices in a single layer. Broil for 1 to 2 minutes, until slightly brown.
4. Divide the tomato mixture evenly over the baguette slices. Top the slices with mozzarella cheese.
5. Broil for 5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

Now, since I’m a meat and potatoes kinda gal, I was looking for something I could grill and keep the heat outside. I’m not a stickler segregating my food by country of origin, so I found this great kabob recipe online as well.

Teriyaki Kabobs

• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
• 1 1/2 pounds boneless beef sirloin steak, cut 1 1/4 inch cubes
• 1 large green bell pepper, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 large onion, cut into wedges
• 12 cherry tomatoes

Directions
1. In a bowl, combine soy sauce, oil, brown sugar, garlic, ginger and salt; mix well. Pour half of the marinade into a large sealable plastic bag or shallow glass container; coat beef in marinade. Seal or cover; refrigerate for 4-8 hours, turning occasionally. Cover and refrigerate remaining marinade.
2. Drain the meat, discarding the marinade. On metal or soaked bamboo skewers, alternate meat, green pepper, onion and tomatoes. Grill, uncovered, over medium heat for 3 minutes on each side.
3. Baste with reserved marinade. Continue turning and basting for 8-10 minutes or until meat reaches desired doneness (for rare, a meat thermometer should read 140 degrees F; medium, 160 degrees F; well done, 170 degrees F). Serve meat and vegetables over cooked rice.

Let me know what you think and Happy Eating! While you’re waiting for the food to cook, try one of these short reads….

Myla’s Most Recent Releases

She’s ready to leave Temptation behind…

Welcome back to the Ugly Stick Saloon with this short story about Charli’s first erotic adventure.

Charli Sutton is tired of the same-ol-same-ol in Temptation, Texas and her job at the Ugly Stick Saloon. Her itchy feet tell her that if it ain’t happenin’ here, it’s time to go back to Austin and raise a little hell.

Obsessions

Thanks so much for having me back, Delilah!

One thing I’m really good at is obsessing. Some of my obsessions are fun, and some are less-so, and a lot of them keep me awake at night.

The most recent is what kind of new couches I want. I’ve spent hours looking online but all the ones I like are the wrong colors.

And before that it was a steam mop. Of course as soon as I bought one at Walmart, I found one on Amazon $20 cheaper.

And there are the strawberry lemonades at McD’s. Some days nothing else will do.

But let’s talk about the fun ones.

Last summer, it was The Tudors. I watched every episode, bought the first three seasons (Charles Brandon lost his appeal in season 4) and started reading Phillipa Gregory books.

Then it was Hawaii Five-O, or should I say Alex O’Loughlin. I even bought The Back-Up Plan with him and J-Lo because he was just so adorable in it. I watched some terrible movies just to catch a glimpse of him.

After that it was Jason Aldean. I must have listened to Wide Open (the CD) a hundred times, especially the song “This I Gotta See.” SUCH a romantic song.

Then it was Justified, or…Timothy Olyphant. I watched the first disc from Netflix, then bought the first season and watched it in something like three days, and I have season 2 on its way from Amazon. I watched all HIS movies (some were pretty good—I bought The Broken Heart Club, Catch and Release and The Perfect Getaway).

I wish I could get obsessed about something like exercise or healthy cooking or keeping the house clean…heck, what’s the fun in that?

What are some of your obsessions?

Check out my new release, Riding Out the Storm, my first ménage from The Wild Rose Press!

Jill Gavin is trying to overcome her bad girl reputation. After a year of celibacy, she’s ready to start a grown-up relationship with Ethan Dewitt, one of her co-workers at the Strait Advertising Agency. A weekend conference seems the perfect chance for a romantic weekend. Jill didn’t count on her boss sending her former lover Zach Purser with them, and she certainly didn’t count on the spring blizzard that strands them in a motel room along the way. She’s stuck in a room with her past and future lover. What’s a former bad girl to do? And if Jill acts on her desires, what will the men think of her?

By the way—my husband knows I write erotic romance, but he DOESN’T know I wrote a ménage, so let’s just keep that between us!

Emma Jay

**Psst! Ms. Paisley and I have an announcement to make! We’ve just contracted to write two anthologies and one co-written book with Ellora’s Cave! The books are dark and kinky and filled with vamps and witches. We can’t wait to start sharing more details! ~DD

Is Kink the New Black?

When Ellora’s Cave first announced their new kink line, I thought I’d never be able to write kink. Until I realized just how kinky my fantasies really are!

Kink is definitely a new trend in erotic romance and I think it’s here to stay. But do you have to be into a particular kink to enjoy reading about it? I don’t think so. For me, anyway, it’s all about the fantasy. And kink romance, like bdsm romance, is all about the power exchange between the characters.

While doing research for Nurse Lovette, I was amazed to discover how many forms of kink there are. From furries to tickle fetishists, they all had one thing in common and that was the sub / dom (or in my case, domme) relationship.

In Nurse Lovette, Avery is a woman whose medical fetish fantasies have prevented her from finding intimacy with her sexual partners. Her therapist encourages her to find a partner who is willing to explore these fantasies in real life. Avery quickly discovers there’s more behind her inability to find intimacy than she realized.

Everybody has a kinky side although it might not be as extreme as Avery’s. Is there a kink or fetish you enjoy reading about that you might or might not try in real life?

I’ll put the commenters names in a hat and draw one for a free download of Nurse Lovette!

Or click here to buy it now from Ellora’s Cave!

After two failed marriages, Avery Walker is encouraged by her therapist to explore her secret obsession. She can’t get off without fantasizing about submitting to intimate examinations—performed by a hot female nurse. When she joins a medical fetish website, she expects to find a partner who’ll provide a little probing and maybe some sexual release to help Avery get in touch with her kinky side.

Then she meets Nurse Lovette…

The consummate professional, Darby Lovette is determined to keep her relationship with Avery one of nurse and patient—nearly impossible when the gorgeous woman is on the exam table, willingly submitting to unspeakably intimate “procedures”. The fact that she’s loved and lost helps Darby maintain her resolve; falling in love isn’t part of her treatment plan. But Avery’s determination to explore sex with a woman just might be the cure for what ails them both.

Reader Advisory: This book employs myriad toys created especially for erotic exams, no holes barred, and, ahem…perhaps a sensual enema—or two.

An Exotika™ erotica story from Ellora’s Cave

Chapter One

Avery Walker pushed her untouched pastry away. She couldn’t have swallowed even if she’d been hungry. Today, not even the soothing scent of fresh-ground coffee and cinnamon buns could quiet her nerves. Today, she was meeting Darby Lovette in person for the first time.

Today, she was facing—and sharing—her darkest, most taboo fantasies.

Encouraged by her therapist, Avery had joined a fetish dating website. After two failed marriages to men, she had very reluctantly decided it might be time to confront her secret desires head on, to see if her therapist was right about the fact that fear was the only thing keeping her from having a real relationship. She’d signed up under the moniker Model Patient Seeks Nurse and had anonymously detailed the particulars of her fetish.

Avery had studied enough psychology in college to know a fetish like hers could drive a wedge between fantasy and real intimacy. How could it possibly help to bring her closer to anyone?

And a stranger at that?

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Taking it Down a Notch

When people ask me what I write, I tailor my answer to the crowd. On the internet, or any time I’m going by my pen name, I proudly and gleefully state that I write erotic romance (or shorter: I write smut!). If my kid’s teacher asks, on the other hand, I just say, “Romance novels. Trashy ones. You’re not old enough to read them.” And when my mom’s friends ask me about my books as we’re sipping tea at the country club, wow do I get coy. Some of her friends are among my readers, and some are not, and you really wouldn’t want to confuse the two groups.

Anyway, it’s a long-running joke in my family that at some point I’m going to have to write something I can publish under my real name, so that my mom can show her friends (and I can show my kids’ teachers) something I’ve written…and nobody will get thrown out of the country club, or booted off the PTA. So when I started writing Gossamer Wing, the steampunk book I’d been planning for years, I decided it was time to take the plunge—or rather, it was time to come into the shallows from out of the deep end—and try my hand at writing a mainstream-heat-level romance.

Harder than you might think. Heh. And that “heh” right there is a good example of why it’s so difficult. When you write erotica, you grow accustomed to seeing the world through the lens of double entendre. Especially when you write BDSM erotica, way over there on the far end of the kinkiness spectrum. If all you have is a flogger, eventually everything starts to look like a tush. Since I started out as an erotic romance writer and most of my books are at least somewhat kink-oriented, I had virtually no experience with vanilla romance writing. If I was going to write the stuff, I realized I had to ditch the flogger.

For one thing, there’s the vocabulary to unlearn. I had an epic twitter conversation about this one day with several other writers of varying heat levels, discussing the words we could/couldn’t use for our various imprints. I rely heavily, for instance, on words that rhyme with “snit”, “wussy”, and “shunt” in my erotica writing. Another author couldn’t even get away with using the word that rhymes with “flock”. None of us liked to use the one that rhymes with “stick”, but the historical writers occasionally used that other one that rhymes with “stick”. Lost yet? Maybe you had to be there, but my point is that without those words, I felt kind of lost, and I had to get creative in a whole new way to keep my book’s sexytimes sexy without overdoing it (yeah, I totally still used snit and flock, though).

The other, and perhaps more important thing, was the shift from a sex-centric story to a story that just happened to have a lot of sex in it. In erotic romance, a lot of the story is told through the sex; that’s where the character development takes place, that’s often where the conflict arises, that’s the point of the sub-genre. In Gossamer Wing, though, the story involves a neo-Victorian North America that never was, a robotically enhanced French spy, a hero who builds astonishing gadgetry out of spare parts, and daring airship exploits by the intrepid heroine. They’re saving the world, and when they stop to have sex they’re stopping the action of the book. That was a big problem.

The key, of course, turned out to be using the sex just like I’d always used it—as a vehicle for character development. By keeping the characters’ arcs firmly in mind, I learned to weave the lovin’ into the story in such a way that it didn’t bring things to a grinding—heh—halt (at least I hope it doesn’t). And going through that learning process gave me a whole new appreciation for mainstream romance writers who strike that balance well. After several years of immersing myself in erotic romance, I’ve started reading mainstream romance again (for the first time since my teenage years) and adoring it.

I have no plans to stop writing the hot stuff, but taking it down a notch and going mainstream has been a surprisingly good experience for me both as a writer and as a reader. I’m already working on a sequel to Gossamer Wing, and this time my focus is on learning to switch back and forth between mainstream and erotica writing modes without going too nuts over those words that rhyme with flock, snit, and wenis (nobody finds that one sexy)!

For a peek at the hot stuff (since Gossamer Wing isn’t sold yet) check out Tangled Truth, my latest from Ellora’s Cave. Go ahead, read an excerpt! It’s the third of four books in my contemporary series, Truth & Lies.

Tangled Truth isn’t remotely mainstream, and it features shibari, Japanese rope bondage. Lots of fun! Rhymes with…nah, I got nothin’.

WHEN BETA RELATIONSHIPS BECOME SERIOUS

or “How To Use a Catcher’s Mitt”

From ACN: When I go to my writing group and mention to friends of mine that I write with a collaborator, or as I call her, a co-author, I get odd looks. One even suggested that it couldn’t possibly be a collaboration and that really I must be doing all the work. But that really couldn’t be farther from the truth.

As in any good partnership, once synergy happens, one can’t tell where an idea began once it gets going. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. (And here you thought two and two only ever equaled four!) Rachel and I started working together several years ago as “beta readers” for each other. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a beta reader is a second pair of eyes who looks at your manuscript and helps to pinpoint areas of weakness. It is not, generally, a line editor. (In fact, many beta readers that I’ve known refuse to line edit.)

When Rachel first sent me a manuscript to look through, what struck me right off was the strength of the story. It did need help with some of the technical details, but the underpinnings were rock-solid. Contrary to what many writers have said in my hearing, it is my belief that STORY is everything. If you don’t have a good story, you just have well-constructed grammar exercises. After all, it’s not very interesting to read “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.”

From RW: I would say that several of the main benefits are input and a second opinion when world building. It also helps to have another pair of eyes when editing and another brain when creating, as well as a built in support system for the tough times. It’s fun to trade ideas and use each other as a sounding board.

Back to ACN: As we worked together, we started talking about how we might write a story together. I suggested a blog, and created Taurus and Taurus. That is how our serial novel NEW WORLD ORDER came to be. At first, Rachel took one character and I another, and we essentially role-played our way through the story. We have the first, second, and third books all plotted out as well as ideas for a couple spin offs.
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